social leaderboard_indian luxury car brands_3 august 2012

SOCIAL LEADERBOARD

LUXURY CAR BRANDS: 21st Jul – 3rd Aug 2012

1:

©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands

INDEX:

SOCIAL LEADERBOARD:

week-on-week performance of top 3 luxury car brands…

SUMMARY

Misfiring star power…

OBSERVATIONS

RECONNECT GRADE:

o BMW

o AUDI

o MERCEDES

WHY COMMUNITIES?

METHODOLOGY:

the research process…

ABOUT SHACK

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Brand

Current 1w ago Current 1w ago Current 1w ago

BMW 11,10,787 9,11,868 40.5% 38.3% 6.3% 22.3%

Audi 10,29,761 8,71,482 37.6% 36.6% 10.3% 2.8%

Merc 5,99,399 5,97,573 21.9% 25.1% 2.9% 3.5%

Community Size Share (%) Activity Grade

SOCIAL LEADERBOARD

21st July – 3rd August 2012

22.3%

6.3%

2.8%

10.3%

3.5%2.9%

5,00,000

6,00,000

7,00,000

8,00,000

9,00,000

10,00,000

11,00,000

12,00,000

- 5.0% 10.0% 15.0% 20.0% 25.0%

Co

mm

un

ity

Size

(m

emb

ers)

Activity Grade

BMW (W3)

BMW (W4)

Audi (W3)

Audi (W4)

Merc (W3)

Merc (W4)

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SUMMARY

Misfiring star power

If the mere presence of a towering personality would have guaranteed

success, then brand building would have been a simple mystery to

solve, with only established brands with financial muscle coming out

on top. But corporate history is littered with several instances which

go on to prove that it is a far more challenging task. Yet, again and

again, we see brands turning a blind eye to this basic reality when

they spend big on brand endorsements with no measurable result in

mind.

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The purpose of a brand endorsement is simple: A celebrity adds a seal of

authenticity to core values a brand promises and represents. The desired

result of this exercise is a concurrent increase in the brand's share of voice

among a specific target audience with the celebrity reinforcing and

reemphasizing the brand’s persona. For the fortnight ending 3 August 2012,

we witnessed all three brands – BMW, Audi, and Mercedes-Benz – had a

go at this exercise and yet they all fell terribly short of accomplishing the

desired goals.

The digital strategy of these brands is an afterthought rather than

being tied in tightly with their overall marketing objective of

partnering with celebrities.

A research study done by Bates India concluded that “Companies have

to realise that it is ideas and not celebrities that build brands.” In the

digital domain, this conclusion is even more relevant since user engagement

on digital platforms is not ephemeral. Unlike the mainline platforms where

communities are exactly what the brands can pick and choose, the entire

body of community interaction remain visible for everyone to see on digital

platforms. Even in cases where there is an upsurge in community activity

due to celebrities, our measurement has shown a net-negative for the

brands as the outcome of the use of the celebrities in the way it is being

done now.

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OBSERVATIONS

BMW, deviating from its traditional strategy of building a message

centred on its product, announced the signing of Sachin Tendulkar as

its brand ambassador. But it failed to leverage this association to

favourably impact the appeal of the new 3-series as the ultimate

machine, best in its class. On the contrary, the grade showed a weak

brand reconnect for these brand attributes showing a steep fall from

10.4% to a mere 0.7%.

The unveiling of the new A8L diesel variant, with Abhishek Bachchan as

the first customer, is devoid of any clear brand goals and targeting,

other than merely generating buzz around the event. Naturally there

was talk among the community about Abhishek Bachchan (5.3%) and

the A8L (8.1%) but a parallel spike in the reconnect grades for

sportiness (0.7%), technology (0.3%) and design (nil) was completely

missing. We firmly believe that an online reportage of the event though

necessary is far off from the meaningful and sustainable interaction that

can be achieved on digital.

Mercedes-Benz, carrying forth its “mb. Feel it!” initiative, launched their

lifestyle magazine with Chetan Bhagat as the guest editor. Despite a

decent concept, unlike BMW and Audi, Mercedes did not improve its

community activity levels which fell from 3.5% to 2.9%. Given the

profile of the audience Chetan Bhagat appeals to, it is not a strategic fit

for the brand which is targeting a readership "the elite and crème-de-

le-crème set of society" and merely seems a loose attempt to garner

eyeballs. The numbers indicate that the brand was not able to connect

with the digital audience on the theme of 'lifestyle' (<1%).

http://www.mercedes-benz.co.in/content/india/mpc/mpc_india_website/enng/home_mpc/passengercars/home/world/Press_Releases/mb__Feel_it_.html

http://www.mercedes-benz.co.in/content/india/mpc/mpc_india_website/enng/home_mpc/passengercars/home/world/Press_Releases/Mercedes-Benz_Magazine__India_s_only_lifestyle_magazine_by_an_automobile_manufacturer__launches_its_2nd_Anniversary_edition.html

http://www.mercedes-benz.co.in/content/india/mpc/mpc_india_website/enng/home_mpc/passengercars/home/world/Press_Releases/Mercedes-Benz_Magazine__India_s_only_lifestyle_magazine_by_an_automobile_manufacturer__launches_its_2nd_Anniversary_edition.html

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10.4%

6.5%

2.5%

1.5% 1.5%0.9%

0.04%-

2.0%

4.0%

6.0%

8.0%

10.0%

12.0%

Re

con

ne

ct G

rad

e

1.1% 1.0%0.8%

0.3% 0.2% 0.1% 0.02%-

1.0%

2.0%

3.0%

4.0%

5.0%

6.0%

Re

con

ne

ct G

rad

e

1.2%

0.6%

0.3%0.2% 0.1% 0.1% 0.1%

-

0.5%

1.0%

1.5%

2.0%

Re

con

ne

ct G

rad

e

RECONNECT GRADE

21st July – 27th July 2012

7:


5.3%

0.8% 0.7% 0.6% 0.6% 0.6%0.04%

-

2.0%

4.0%

6.0%

8.0%

10.0%

12.0%

Re

con

ne

ct G

rad

e

5.3%

0.8%

0.2% 0.2% 0.1% 0.04% 0.01%-

1.0%

2.0%

3.0%

4.0%

5.0%

6.0%

Re

con

ne

ct G

rad

e

1.4%

1.0% 0.9%

0.2% 0.2%0.1% 0.1%

-

0.5%

1.0%

1.5%

2.0%

Re

con

ne

ct G

rad

e

RECONNECT GRADE

28th July – 3rd August 2012

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About the Social Leaderboard

The Leaderboard updates the results derived from our internal tools and

methodologies on a bi-monthly basis, based on which we will bring out our

conclusions. Shack uses a proprietary grading mechanism

ShackMatrix™ to derive the Authority, Activity and Reconnect Grades,

which are key determinants of a brand’s social presence. Read more

about the Matrix and Grades.

Why Communities? Create, Connect, Curate — The Shack Manifesto for Building

Communities With the social online world becoming an important cog in a customer’s

relationship with a brand, there is a need for a common language that can

give meaning to the seemingly unstructured social data scattered across

platforms that represents a brand’s interaction with its core community.

As has happened with the introduction of any new communication medium,

practitioners are making the mistake of using the measuring stick (such as

views and reach) of traditional advertising media to gauge success in the

social web. For over a half a century, we have been thinking about

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marketing in terms of campaigns with a very clear beginning, middle and an

end. But the online digital world is currently in the process of being rebuilt

around people and what we know as the social web, in a few years, would

simply be the web.

Therefore, long term success for brands depends on leveraging these

human relationships to create a strong sense of community around

products, concepts and values that are dearest to the brands.

How we measure effectiveness in Online Communities?

The ShackMatrix™ is a proprietary framework that enables assessment of a

brand’s digital footprint in a holistic way. It is a common language designed to

understand the value of a brand’s online efforts expressed through 5 grades that

combine the understanding of traditional branding with the dynamics of a social

online world.

Presence Grade: Measures how well is the brand represented on digital

platforms.

Authority Grade: Measures how authoritative is a brand’s owned-

channels for information on the brand and its products.

TG Grade: Measures the percentage of the desired target group mix

active on the brand’s owned platforms.

Activity Grade: Measures the level of activity on existing channels.

Re-Connect Grade: Measures the extent to which community members

connect and identify the brand with the attributes desired by it.

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Data Methodology

We take online performance as a holistic concept. While size of the brand’s

community and level of activity are important factors, the profile of the TG,

the authority of the brand’s platforms and its recall are also equally

important ingredients.

In calculating the ShackMatrix™, we assign weights to the different metrics

on individual platforms in order to combine them into a single comparable

grade that is relevant to the digital objectives of the brand.

The weights are decided based on the relative effectiveness of the platform

to a brand’s community as well as the brand’s own digital goals.

Data Validity and Integrity

We source the data from the brand’s official digital properties. Our scope is

restricted by the data made available through the APIs of the social

platforms we cover.

The coverage of data in this report is restricted to Facebook and Twitter.

More detailed and granular metric studies are done for clients on a project

basis.

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About Shack

Shack is a digital marketing company which brings together brands and their

customers in carefully crafted, wholesome communities, providing exceptional

experiences for all.

We leverage communities for brands:

In order to create and maintain buzz around your brand you need your target

audience to form lasting relationships with your brand.

We build platforms for the communities:

Being a one-stop solution for all your community building and web-based marketing

needs, we craft comprehensive campaigns, based on careful strategy, encompassing

an entire digital eco-system.

We develop content for the platforms:

Along with creating engagement tools both online and off-line we also encourage and

facilitate generation of remarkably effective and compelling content, in a methodical

manner by our own team, and in a random manner, by your community members.

We measure the impact on the brand:

You need to monitor the impact that the campaign has on your brand. This impact is

not something hypothetical, it is hard, tangible, three-dimensional data that not only

tells you where you presently stand, but also tells you where you need to go and

what path you need to follow with the help of Shack’s proprietary Digital Ecosystem

Management tool. Website || Blog || Twitter

http://www.shack.co.in/

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social leaderboard_indian luxury car brands_3 august 2012

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