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High end car brands partner with social media influencers

With a spike in the use of social media platforms across most industries, it’s not surprising to see high end car brands like BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Lamborghini, Ferrari and Volvo shift their focus on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for their respective marketing campaigns. These platforms have drastically increased customer interaction/engagement and also provided a fantastic base for market research for all these firms. Car brands can use it as an inexpensive tool to gauge consumer preferences and trends based on responses to the content put out on all the platforms.

Ever so often, consumers are however limited to photos of limited edition car releases or whacky concepts or brand new model launches. This has completely changed for the better as high end car brands have begun to partner with global social media influencers like James (MrJWW) and Alex Hirshi (Supercarblondie) with a combined audience reach of over 4 million viewers/followers across Instagram and YouTube alone.

With the help of these social media influencers car brands are now providing direct access to people around the world whenever they launch new cars and concepts. Since most of the biggest auto show reveals happen at Geneva (Switzerland), Pebble Beach (USA) and Shanghai (China), invitations to these events are rather exclusive and invite only especially if it’s a brand like Lamborghini or Ferrari. The general public has limited access to the new cars or concepts, however people can now live through the access given to social media influencers to learn more about the car and the brand.

Hence, it isn’t surprising to see high end car brands tailor their marketing campaigns in terms of press releases and press conferences to include social media influencers like MrJWW and Supercarblondie get first access that can be shared with all their followers. This helps the companies create the necessary buzz and hype that traditional car magazine and publications are limited to as consumers turn to those publications for their opinion on the build quality and drivability of the car rather than the first access content.

As more car brands are pushing into the lifestyle aspect of owning a car, the connection made through social media influencers tends to reach out further than traditional news publications as most of the influencers tailor content on the aspect of living with high end cars and the various adventures they take in order to enjoy their high priced possessions. This is much harder to do through the car brands own social media pages as consumers will only look at the content as a promotion rather than making an emotional connection that they usually make when they see the same content through social media influencers. Given the success of the partnerships with social media influencers, car companies have begun to focus further on marketing campaigns that can be tailored around the lifestyle of these social media influencers to make that emotional and personal connection with their consumers.