#SnapChart: What car brands are people talking about?
At Pulsar we have conducted in-depth research into audiences talking about cars online, to see what we could find out about the automotive industry. To do so we analysed Fortune 500’s top 10 car brands and their digital audiences across Europe.
We quickly discovered that the mention of car brands varies considerably from country to country. Past winter, Audi took top spot in Italy, largely due to a viral story about a Swiss-plated RS4 being on the run near Turin. Audi is also popular in France, the United Kingdom and unsurprisingly, Germany. Hot on its heels is another German car manufacturer, BMW, taking up second place for the majority of conversation in most other countries. Unfortunately, across the board Lexus and Nissan fall to last place struggling to get heard amongst more talked-about car brands.
Within digital conversation, a clear correlation exists between awareness and engagement, shown in the diagram below. The hangover from last year’s #dieselgate scandal continues to hamper perceptions of VW, with the lowest sentiment balance during the period monitored. Land Rover outperforms its awareness due to the discontinuation of the iconic Defender, and thus generating an outpouring of nostalgia.
On the 23rd of June our VP of Product & Research, Franscesco D'Orazio, will be doing a talk on The Visual DNA of Car Brands in Social Media during the MRS Automotive conference. His session will look specifically at how car brands are discussed on Instagram, and discussion will be focused around how brand values are translated into visual imagery, and whether consumer images are able to reflect or distort the identity of a brand.
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