Creator and Influencer Marketing are pivotal for brands looking to tap into new audiences with content that not only drives awareness and engagement but also boosts sales.
It’s easy to assume creators are most effective for industries like food or beauty who’ve dominated by visually showcasing their products intertwined in genuine, story-driven content. The quick path to purchase for CPG/FMCG products helps certain industries thrive - especially on Social Media and eComm.
If you’re thinking Creator Marketing isn’t as powerful for automotive brands due to its longer purchase experience, don’t be fooled.
Given the fact that a staggering 95% of vehicle buys gather information on digital platforms, it’s clear influencers and creators are a solution for automotive brands looking to drive awareness, consideration and sales. The secret lies in applying the same exceptional storytelling talents of creators to a full-funnel strategy.
Some of the world’s leading automotive brands have partnered with TRIBE to drive exceptional strategies and generate stunning, high-performing content. From product launches to TikTok filters and celebrating milestones, let’s dive into some exceptional creative approaches and tactics to inspire yours.
🚗 Haval - New Energy: Beautifully Harnessed
When introducing their all-new Hybrid SUVs, Haval and GWM turned to TRIBE’s creator community and expert team to deliver a campaign that:
• Showcased Haval’s dedication to innovation
• Told the story of their stylish, sophisticated and adventurous brand and vehicles
• Reached a wide audience of drivers aged 25-45 located in Australian capital cities
The approach:
What happens when you pair dozens of talented creators with a brand new SUV for a few days and ask them to capture an adventure?
Stunning content featuring that SUV, crafted by talented and relatable people living diverse lifestyles.
From beachside road trips to cityscape backgrounds, classic landmarks or everyday moments around town, the creators set out to tell the story of how the vehicle personally added an experience to their lives while authentically showcasing its many innovative features.
The result:
Diversity and ideal audiences were key. From over 77 pitches, 20 creators were selected to bring their ideas to life. The mix of stunning still photography and short-form video racked up an overall engagement rate of 10.54%, with the top performer reaching an impressive 23.14%.
The best part? The highly engaging content reached the intended audience of male and female drivers aged 25-45, located in Australian capital cities.
The key takeaway:
Creators celebrating Haval’s innovative tech and stylish features through their own stories brought the content needed to appeal to a diverse customer base.
Haval gained awareness for their new vehicles with content that struck the perfect balance of informative and relatable. This is increasingly difficult for brands to do at scale without the variety of voices of a creator community.
Check out some highlight content below from @caitlin.bailey who told the story of a day out with her daughter in an engaging Instagram Reel. The Reel performed so well that she followed up with an in-depth IG story answering questions from her audience.
Haval are now working with their dedicated TRIBE team to facilitate a longer-term strategy taking the proven storytelling approach beyond awareness and towards driving action and intent through website traffic and vehicle test drives.
🚗 Suzuki - #SuzukiSuccess, no car required
Suzuki, a brand all about fun and adventure, aimed to redefine success in their first TikTok creator campaign with TRIBE. Moving away from traditional measures of success, they wanted to emphasize joy, laughter, and the pleasure of living life on one's terms - values that are synonymous with their brand and values.
The approach:
By nature, storytelling doesn’t require a huge focus on product features. Suzuki’s creative approach was all about evoking emotions, eliminating the need to showcase a vehicle entirely. Instead of showing their vehicles in action, they showed joy in action.
Suzuki briefed TRIBE creators to shoot a video of themselves achieving ‘success’ in beautiful, random or funny situations and yell at the top of their lungs “SAHHHHHZUUUUUKKKKKIIIII”. To finish, their moment of success is caught in a freezeframe accompanied by Suzuki’s custom branded effect. Creators then encouraged viewers to create their own moments using the #SuzukiSuccess hashtag, generating higher reach and brand awareness.
The result:
10 TikToks were published racking up almost 60hrs of playtime and 65k engagements and views. While the campaign was an experimental way to test the waters with their hashtag challenge, it proved successful when picked up organically by the wider TikTok community. Dozens of TikTokkers began participating in the challenge assisting Suzuki in building their own audience on the platform.
The key takeaway:
Incorporating humour into campaigns helps foster genuine connections with the audience, making the brand more memorable. Suzuki's #SuzukiSuccess campaign was a great example of how to use Influencer Marketing to generate excitement and buzz without the go-to method of showcasing the product itself.
🚗 Land Rover - Celebrating Milestones
When celebrating their 70th anniversary, Land Rover paid homage to their history by celebrating their worldwide community of loyal fans. The iconic brand wanted to mark the incredible milestone with creators who represent the brand’s ‘above and beyond’ spirit in content featuring their vehicles - new and old.
The approach:
The Land Rover team partnered with TRIBE to generate a huge volume of content from Land Rover owners within our global community of content creators.
The brief called for pics and clips featuring any of their vehicles in fun and adventurous outdoor locations. The campaign didn’t focus on any particular Land Rover model or specific features, but rather their entire range of vehicles play different roles in the lives of their owners. They sought content that celebrated the journey rather than the destination.
The results:
98 posts were published across Instagram and Facebook to a combined audience of over 5.7 million racking up over 160k engagements and a low CPE of just $0.11.
The stunning content consistently celebrated the journey rather than the destination featuring stunning scenic landscapes and the adventurous moments made possible by Land Rover vehicles.
The key takeaway:
Celebrating milestones with genuine members of their community strengthens the bond between customer and brand. Land Rover beautifully captured what their vehicles mean to their owners while generating an incredible volume of content that truly represents their brand ethos and history.
🚗 Nissan - Focus on savings
The road to purchasing a vehicle is longer than many products. Automotive advertising often focuses on seeing the end product in action with less attention paid to the research and consideration that goes into purchasing a car. Nissan seized the opportunity to collaborate with creators to spread awareness of their massive end-of-year.
The approach:
With a particular focus on promoting the Qashqai, Nissan briefed their brand fans to shoot content highlighting their website experience. The content itself showed their website on iPads in stunning lifestyle images, while the creator’s captions described the experience, exciting features of the Qashqai, and of course, the huge savings currently on offer.
The results:
A total of 9 Instagram posts were published to an audience of over 730k followers. Each post encouraged the audience to visit Nissan’s website and explore the sale and attracted an overwhelming level of positive sentiment in comments.
The key takeaway:
By aligning their campaign with a specific promo, Nissan were able to drive specific actions from the audience. The real opportunity for future campaigns lies in amplification. By boosting the top-performing content as paid Creator Ads, Nissan could target ideal audiences and drive track website traffic with precision with the same authentic content that was proven to perform organically.
🚗 National Heavy Vehicle Regulator - Don’t #uck with a truck!
The National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) isn't just another governmental agency. They play a crucial role in ensuring the safety of heavy vehicle operations. With the rise of accidents involving trucks and private vehicles, NHVR wanted to make a statement, educating the younger generation on the importance of safe driving practices around trucks.
The approach:
To educate young drivers, NHVR cleverly sought to reach them on social media with humour and relatability. They partnered with creators under the age of 30 to speak to their young audiences in a way that would most resonate. Creators were asked to pitch their ideas of how they’d communicate the key educational messages of how to drive safely around trucks, aligned to NHVR’s overall campaign - ‘Don’t #uck with a truck!’
The results:
15 Instagram posts and Reels were published achieving an incredible 17.19% average engagement rate, reaching almost 10% of the total audience. The content featured a mix of young drivers still learning their way on the road and young parents highlighting the importance of safety - all in a fun and approachable way.
The key takeaway:
Merging educational content with engaging narratives ensures the audience not only absorbs the information but also shares and acts on it. The NHVR's Don't #uck with a truck! campaign was a great example of how to use influencer marketing to raise awareness of an important social issue.
Elevate with storytelling to drive Creator Marketing through the entire funnel
Like most industries, automotive is fast-paced and countless approaches can lead to high-performance campaigns that achieve far more than brand awareness.
Like all successful Creator Marketing strategies, the key lies in having clear goals, a creative approach and aligning with the right creators to tell the story of your brand through their voice. But, real performance is unlocked by thinking beyond organic social media partnerships and towards how that same content can drive business outcomes.
For the automotive industry, the opportunity to apply your Creator Marketing to the entire marketing funnel is limitless but, requires a few extra hands.
That’s where TRIBE Plus comes in. By partnering with TRIBE you’ll access our 100% opt-in creator community and save time and money using our tech platform to automate the tasks we all hate. But, most importantly you’ll have a dedicated team with you every step of the way delivering a solution customised to your unique needs. A team of experts to align and optimise your strategy and campaigns, manage creator relationships, organise test drives and continuously discover opportunities to increase performance.
Ready to learn more?
