To-yo-tally missing the mark on social media?
Yesterday Toyota announced that they’d selected 5 advertising agencies to pitch for their social media activity where the community would determine the winners, the two best performing agencies would get more work in 2010.
B&T Today revealed last week that Toyota is running the social media pitch, pitting eight agencies against each other with four agencies then to go head to head with their ideas in the public domain. Following on from this, the two best will produce further work in the new year.
Background
Having worked on the digital account for Holden (held by Visual Jazz) for some time now, I’ve been keeping a close eye on who’s doing what. Interestingly enough, Toyota have recently been putting a lot of effort into Facebook – in particular – buying advertising and growing their fan base.
Toyota
They have also developed an application, called ‘Toyota Promise Forest‘, aligned with the Prius. The concept looks good, one of the best in Australia, however, it doesn’t work – and it hasn’t for quite some time. You’ll see when you use the app that YOUR NAME is TIMOTHY and the friends aren’t my friends, and you can’t actually use the app.
Now we assumed, when we first found the application, that it was new and being repaired, however, it’s been a couple of months now, and still it’s not working.
It makes me wonder why Toyota are ramping up their social media when their current efforts are so broken? That aside, how can you have 5 campaigns in market and effectively measure the performance of each activity separately? Would you run 5 TVCs at once to see which one works best?
Ford
I’ve also heard rumblings that Ford have also just selected an agency to roll out a social media strategy. Whilst at the same time they’ve developed ‘MyFord‘ a social media hub for their brand, however, it’s kinda broken…
Others
Lots of the other auto’s are in the space, but nothing noteworthy at this stage.
Summary: the Australian auto category will be an interesting one to watch in the coming 6-12 months
Totally with you on the Toyota issue Simon. I Tweeted something along the same lines at http://twitter.com/JamesDuthie/status/5015199726
Won’t comment much on myFord as I’ve been heavily involved with the project (and it’s really still in beta). I’ll just make the distinction that myFord is a content hub for owners, with social elements, rather than a pure social play.
Its good to see Ford getting involved in this media as its a great way to build relationships and market your product. I too saw Toyota build a huge fanbase with their facebook advert. The question is how effectively they understand their fan base and how effectively they are then able to market to it. As owners of a Ford social networking site http://theblueovalnetwork.com I will watch with interest. Thanks for the article.