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Car-maker Seat try out social media – and get it all wrong

By Nick Johnson on July 19, 2011

Whilst car manufacturers like Ford, General Motors and Toyota have long been active – and successful – on social networks, Spanish car maker Seat is only just dipping its toe in the water.

They’re doing so by offering free music to visitors to their new Facebook and Twitterpages.

But it doesn’t seem to be working. The site was launched last week, but has just 185 Facebook likes, and whilst the Twitter account has a slightly more respectable 976 followers, it’s likely because the Seat account have decided to follow 1,225 other people and been automatically re-followed.

Why?

Well, I think that the campaign isn’t tied closely enough to the product. Seat makes cars. This campaign pushes free music. It’s not immediately apparent what the link is, and evidently Seat are struggling to find the right audience to target with the campaign.

One of their Tweets says:

“Pick up 50 free music downloads by popping to your local SEAT dealership (& why not take a look at
some shiny new cars while you’re at it?)”

Seriously? How many people in the market for 50 free music tracks also have the many thousands of pounds available to just impulse buy a new car?

Another – major – problem: Steve Robertson, head of marketing at Seat UK says in this piece they plan to use the campaign to “create a community around its brand and spark conversations”.

And yet once you click ‘like’ on their Facebook page, you don’t get taken to a wall, or encouraged to participate in anything, you just get shown the exact page you saw pre-like. Which, by the way, doesn’t include any requests or invitations to join the conversation around the brand.

This strikes me as an example of a company who have been told “use social media!” and have tried to come up with some excuse to do so. There’s no alignment with the core brand, there’s no added functionality and usefulness for potential customers, and there doesn’t appear to be much in the way of community building efforts.

The company are upping their digital spend by 20% year on year according to this article. At this point, it appears they’re wasting their money.

But am I wrong? Anyone out there see why Seat have taken this approach? Any feedback, comments, or explanations as to why I’ve totally missed the point are much appreciated – just leave them in the comments.

About Nick Johnson

Nick founded Useful Social Media in 2009 to deliver business intelligence on social media for large businesses. Nick writes regularly for the blog, along with putting together the annual State of Corporate Social Media report and various other longer-form briefings.

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http://www.analogfolk.com Stephen Pirrie

Thanks for your comments. It’s great to read a partisan critique. I work at AnalogFolk, the agency responsible for SEAT UK’s social media and this campaign. It’s worth clarifying a few things so you guys have a fuller picture of the music campaign and the underlying strategy behind it, but also SEAT’s wider social media presence and the music campaign beyond social media.

SEAT has been active on social media for 18 months (see http://www.facebook.com/SEATUK and http://www.twitter.com/SEAT_Cars_UK) and created its first music sponsorship last year to build awareness in the UK which has the youngest audience of any major UK car manufacturer. Last summer SEAT sponsored Reading and Leeds festivals and produced an AFP for Channel 4 which featured 12 artists recording music live straight to vinyl. SEAT UK’s Facebook page fans were able to download 12 tracks from the show. Videos on the SEAT Youtube channel gathered more than 200,000 views in a branded SEAT environment and, following a Facebook campaign by viewers, we released The Maccabees cover of Walking in the Air in December on iTunes. The AFP won Music and Brand partnership of the Year at the Music Week Awards. Series Two of “On Track with SEAT” is airing this autumn on C4.

The 2010 music campaign was tied into the special edition SEAT Good Stuff car model which featured a unique music system. In 2011 the music campaign supports the free upgrades within the special edition SEAT COPA cars.

This year we have launched a niche music community to cater specifically to music fans outside of SEAT’s core brand social media channels. As the community grows we will be engaging with fans in a number of ways. And for music fans who would like to get hold of free music, we are giving away downloads at dealerships to build footfall. We don’t imagine anyone will impulse buy a car (if only!) but instead, we aim to grow consideration of SEAT cars in the process. If you take a test drive you receive a further 50 downloads.

On the SEAT UK Facebook page we’ve added functionality by building in a Range tab allowing Facebook users to browse cars within the comfort of Facebook. On Twitter we didn’t mass follow people, but have followed back our followers so we can listen to what they are saying.

Lastly, judging a social media presence in isolation of a brand’s other channel activity (and even its other social media channels!) does not seem very just – especially not within a week of launch. I hope I’ve helped you understanding the Music programme in its entirety. Music isn’t SEAT’s venture into social media and certainly isn’t the only place to go in social media for information about SEAT’s cars.

http://usefulsocialmedia.com Nick

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for your message and apologies for taking so long to get back to you.

It’s interesting to see how extensive SEAT’s commitment to music is, and it sounds like you’ve done some great things leveraging this content for branding and, to a lesser extent, engagement.

It’s also worth holding my hands up re your social media presence only launching the week before I wrote my piece.

Reading your comment has clarified an awful lot in terms of your intentions with the campaign, and the extensive, broader campaign your social media interaction is part of. I now understand that this wasn’t so much a first foray into social media, but an element of a broader, music-based, campaign.

However, I do feel like a few of my points still stand.

it doesn’t seem like an awful lot has happened re bringing together a community on either the Facebook or Twitter pages since my first post. We’re now about a month into the campaign and there are just 653 Facebook fans, and 1,226 Twitter followers. It would be interesting to hear a little more about how you’re driving people to this page, and what sort of conversion rates you’re getting.

I’m surprised that with 200,000 views of your YouTube videos, you’re still struggling to bring in people to engage on Facebook and Twitter. Was there an attempt to join up these two campaigns? It’s a question worth asking – I know from our conferences how important it is to ‘join up’ the various campaigns one runs – and even avoid thinking of social media as a campaign full stop. That it’s actually a long-running and continual conversation. Perhaps the focus on individual campaigns hamstrings your attempts to get full engagement?

Secondly, it certainly seems like you’re taking seriously the importance of engagement on your wall etc – there are a lot of questions, requests for photos and other bits of content for the people that follow you. But there doesn’t appear to be an awful lot of actual engagement from your audience – I can’t spot any photos to “sum up this summer’s music events” as you requested at the end of July for instance.

As I wrote in the piece, the initial welcome page one sees after clicking ‘like’ has no attempts to drive conversation, or any sort of suggestion that you have an active wall, with conversations being started. Perhaps were you to push the engagement/conversation more here, rather than finding a dealer or winning headphones, you may get more engagement. Anna, in the comments, has suggested perhaps asking a question like “What’s your favourite music to listen to while driving?”. Could be a good thing to push front and centre on that ‘welcome’ page?

I appreciate all your feedback so far – and am certainly interested in the various things you’re doing to boost Seat’s presence through a close affiliation to music and live festivals. But I do feel like there are still some elements lacking in the campaign that have contributed to the lack of followers, and lack of engagement.

I’d be more than happy to publish any further comments and continue the discussion.

Nick

http://www.tmcnet.com/community Anna

I think it’s a great concept, though- EVERYONE loves listening to music when they’re driving, so what they could have done is integrate that concept into their social media campaign a little more. Like a contest, or “what’s your favorite music to listen to while driving” types of prompts. Even have people share videos of them singing along to their favorite songs in the car.
Having the social links also on their site is key also. Ultimately I think they were on the right track, but didn’t tie together the concept with their product tightly enough.
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http://stevemurthey.com Steve Murthey

Your observation that “This strikes me as an example of a company who have been told “use social media!” and have tried to come up with some excuse to do so” may be spot-on.

The way to Social Media campaign success includes a social media strategy, developed by using a proven framework or methodology. A methodology where a fundamental question would be asked when looking at the target membership: “What are you offering that will attract and engage the target members in such a way that they become active members of the community?” (I posted about this almost three years ago – http://bit.ly/n603AL.)

I know that when I’m looking for a car, I’m not looking for free music – I’m looking for intelligent and (hopefully) objective online conversation as part of my investigation and research. I also know that if I’m looking for an engaged community around a specific brand, I may not want to engage on three social platforms (hint: maybe an on-board community, with link driving content on the off-board networks). An finally, I know that if there is not some call to action “post-like”, I (like most users) usually will not take any additional immediate action – a lost opportunity for engagement and any chance of going viral for Seat.

In addition, not only is the Seat home page is missing prominent links to their Social presence (key when trying to build community); I couldn’t find ANY links to their Social presence anywhere on their web site.

Hopefully Seat will recognize the shortcomings of their approach and make some adjustments quickly. Else, they may have squandered their opening play in Social.
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