Today we’re going to look at fifteen of the leading automotive brands from around the world, taking their Facebook Timeline designs for a track test in order to better understand how to effectively use Facebook Timeline for your brand.
Keep reading to find out why product porn pics reign supreme, and why one automotive brand has left us totally perplexed, leaving us with one simple question… WTF?
Ranking by Number of Likes
Before we get to the track test, let’s see how the major automotive brands stack up in terms of the number of likes that they have built up on Facebook:
European
|
Domestic
|
Asian
|
|---|
European Cars
BMW
Ferrari
Audi
Porsche
Vokswagen
View Volkswagen’s Facebook Page
Lamborghini
View Lamborghini’s Facebook Page
Aston Martin
View Aston Martin’s Facebook Page
Domestic
Ford
Dodge
GM
View General Motors’s Facebook Page
Asian
Honda
Toyota
Nissan
Subaru
Hyundai
Product Porn Wins
When examining the Facebook Timeline cover designs for these automotive brands, you’ll notice that almost all of them use some form of product porn.
For those who are not familiar with the term, product porn is the glamorous and visually spectacular display of a product. It is used across a variety of product categories as a means to captivate the attention of consumers, drive engagement and build brand loyalty.
Targeted Consumer Product Porn
One cover photo strategy you’ll notice above is the use of a variation of product porn that trades glamour for communicating purpose and connecting with target consumers. The Subaru cover photo is a great example of this approach. By showing an attractive photo of their car in an outdoor setting with a young, adventurous couple, they are not only showing off their car, but also communicating the intended audience for their car.
User-Generated Product Porn
Honda has taken a strategy of combining user-generated content to connect with a variety of target market segments that highlight their cars in a product porn fashion. This hybrid approach is a great way to connect with fans of your brand, show them you care and give them a reason to act as a brand champion, sharing your Facebook page with their friends.
Instead of just showing off one picture, Honda shows a collage of targeted consumer product porn. This not only helps to motivate other fans to submit their product porn, it’s also one of the most effective ways to influence purchasing decisions.
Perplexing Product Porn
We really didn’t understand what Ford was thinking when it chose the product porn of a corporate office building with foreign flags for its Facebook Timeline cover photo. Was Ford abandoning the US market? We could only conclude that either someone was lazy and took a picture on their way in to work, or that Ford feels the best thing for their brand is to remind people that they are a multinational corporation now, and not a good ol’ American company.
One can’t help but wonder what Ford is trying to communicate to consumer when they choose a photo showing flags from Israel, Japan, Kuwait, Mexico, and Great Britain – and only 25% of the base of the American flag.