Social Media Innovation- David Fink

Posts Tagged ‘VWoA’

With social media being the new marketing tool, does every company utilize them? Are large company/corporations still relying on old advertising/marketing tools such TV and Physical locations? I chose two companies, that are important to me and that are large in comparison to brand awareness, and will research their social media involvement.

Volkswagen (no surprise I chose them) is the third largest automotive manufacturing company in the world. They are also the 53^rd most recognizable brand in the world. When you visit Volkswagens American site (www.VW.com) you are brought to a flash coded site with no initial icon or affiliation with any social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter, but they do have a drop down menu labeled ‘Blogs’. Under the blogs menu Volkswagen has created specific blogs for the Jetta, Passat, Touareg, Beetle, Upcoming and Concept cars, TDI Truth & Dare, and VW events. Once you have accessed the blogs on the right side they have a menu that says, ‘Follow VW’, which has icons/links for Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. Underneath that menu there’s another labeled ‘VW Fans’ which has a like button and a visual of people that have already liked VW USA on Facebook as well as a like count (which is currently 715,775). I already liked the page so I was able to access it right away and in my personal opinion they are excelling on the home front of utilizing Facebook. I despise Twitter and I do not have an account so I cannot comment on their involvement in that source of social media. I do enjoy Youtube and will give my $0.02 on their involvement there. Volkswagen has 1.9 million channel views, with 14,000 subscribers, and 48 million total upload views. I would say those numbers are significant enough to call their use of Youtube a success. Volkswagen is able to upload all of their ad’s, including The Force commercial which currently has 35 million views alone, as well as all of their debut and event videos. Overall, I would say Volkswagen has adapted to social media and is properly marketing their company with these new social media innovations.

*Note: This is all based on Volkswagen of America.

For my second company I chose, Fabspeed, which is a smaller company. Fabspeed is a smaller local company (Ambler, Pa). The reason I chose them is because I will hopefully (crossing my fingers) be working for them this summer. Fabspeed is one of the biggest performance exhaust and intake manufacturers for exotic cars. They specialize in Porsche, Bentley, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW’s. When you go to their website they have logo’s on the right menu for Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Vimeo. Compared to Volkswagen, a large company, their social media pages are a lot easier to access. They have 490 friends on Facebook and on Youtube they have 369 followers of their channel, 15,770 channel views, and 1.6 million total views. The amount of total views in comparison to Volkswagen 48 million is great. I would say that Fabspeed is utilizing several social media applications very well.