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First #Twitter4Auto events inspire – and trend – in Detroit and LA

Wednesday, 17 June 2015

Last week, we brought partners from across the U.S. auto industry together at the first #Twitter4Auto gathering for two days of education, inspiration and conversation — so much conversation, in fact, that both events trended on Twitter.

 

Fittingly, we began the week in the Motor City.

We opened the afternoon in Detroit to discuss why Twitter matters to auto brands (hint: it’s all about mobile, and connecting with consumers around the power of #NOW).


CNET’s Brian Cooley (@briancooley) took the stage to talk about the intersection of consumer technology and the auto industry, making a compelling case for wide acceptance of the connected car.

In fact, one of the most Tweeted stats he shared was: every day, U.S. drivers spend 88 million hours commuting. He also shared that by 2020 there could be 220M connected cars on the road. Just imagine what people will do with all that free time once cars are doing most of the driving!

 

Our head of Ads Research, Jeffrey Graham (@jeffrigram), shared insights from a new @Canvs study. Analysis of a year’s worth of auto-related tweets shows that the Twitter auto conversation has scale, happens in real time and is consumer-led and intent-oriented.


Based on these findings, a few best practices for automotive advertisers on Twitter emerged. 

  • First, give consumers what they want: content that reflects innovation, performance and features to help them make purchase decisions.

  • Second, align your content strategy with sales events and auto shows – this is when Twitter users are most likely to be Tweeting about cars.

  • And third, use Twitter to humanize your brand and connect individually with current owners and prospects.


Clients from @LandRoverUSA and @Ford shared their Twitter tip, describing how they use Twitter to execute both upper-funnel awareness-building campaigns and lower-funnel lead generation programs.


The Detroit event ended with a look at the power of Twitter data.

 

Later in the week, we took the #Twitter4Auto show to Los Angeles.

As in Detroit, we began the day with a discussion of the power of #NOW.


TrueCar (@TrueCar) President John Krafcik (@johnkrafcik) joined us for a look at how millennials and mobile are influencing car shopping today.


Later in the day, clients from @Kia and @JaguarUSA shared their Twitter success stories, from aligning Twitter strategy with TV flighting to driving leads with Website Cards.

 

To wrap up the day, Niche founder Darren Lachtman (@dlach5) spoke about the power of content and the new generation of content creators. He was joined by Niche creator Cody Johns (@cody), who shared some of his thoughts on working with brands. Cody’s key piece of advice for brands: the most successful partnerships are those where brands trust creators to deliver content that’s relevant to their audience AND integrates their brand appropriately.

 
A big thanks to all who helped to make these first-ever #Twitter4Auto events educational and fun. You can check out every Tweet from both events here – and take a look at our newest research detailing the automotive consumer experience on Twitter.