By Nick Johnson - July 19th, 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'...

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.

Next Reads

comments powered by Disqus