Marketing Racing #6: Porsche’s Heist and the power of Storytelling

PORSCHE’S YOUTUBE CHANNEL VIDEOS VIEWS COUNT (IN MILLIONS) AGAINST LENGTH

*The Heist video and two full races videos have not been included in the graph as too far from the average in terms of views and length respectively.

The second factor is Content Curation to maximise engagement. The original idea behind the video proves the Porsche team's understanding of its fans and customer base. So it does the rest of its online presence.

The graph here shows clearly how despite not being the first brand in terms of following in his segment, Porsche manages to obtain far more engagement than all the other brands. This indicates knowledge of the niche and a consistent strategy to give the right media experience, which is key as the overall content published online multiplies exponentially every day and it becomes more and more difficult to gain attention. You can also see how the company fares against its competitors on the other major platforms here Automotive Social Media Marketing: Why Lamborghini is Winning.

The third tool regards the gradual consolidation of the media industry, especially regarding online streaming outlets, which gives companies the opportunity to access better data to gain insights about customer preferences and trends. This factor refers to the wider strategy and is thus not applicable to this specific case.

WHAT ABOUT OTHER AUTOMAKERS?

The whole industry is adapting to a finer, more creative, emotionally, and visually appealing online communication.

Within the same market niche, Lamborghini's social media marketing actually gets the strongest results of all on multiple platforms. On YouTube it achieves similar results with its two most successful campaigns called Lamborghini Real Lover and A true Christmas Story for Lamborghini’s real lovers discussed previously here Automotive Social Media Marketing: Why Lamborghini is Winning and now counting respectively 17.9 and 8.1 million views. Despite the different narratives, in this instance, Lamborghini’s storytelling also appeals to people’s emotions epitomising the supercar dream through the children's imagination.

Ferrari is also gradually moving in a similar direction. The best example of this is the video for the latest addition to the lineup, the Roma. In their official video, which is already the second most viewed of their channel, Ferrari presents the whole concept behind the new model through music and suggestive images. This makes particular sense as the model aims at a new market niche previously not completely covered by the brand and well represented here by the ‘La Nuova Dolce Vita’ concept.

McLaren does it as well very cleverly and in its own way with the 2019 GT presentation which is too the most viewed commercial on its channel. And replicates original ideas for other models too such as the P1 or the latest 765LT.

As for the other British automakers, Aston Martin brings an amazing example of storytelling with the SUV DBX introduction which probably gets the timing wrong though. The video, in fact, has been published only a few days ago, while the car has unfortunately already been teased, presented, and reviewed several weeks ago.

Finally, at the beginning of the video, I specified that ‘The Heist’ is the most viewed automotive commercial. It is not in fact the most-viewed automotive video. This honour goes to Bugatti’s Chiron 0-400-0 video. I did not include this in my review, as the company has such a selected customer base, with its super-low production volume that the business model and communication are, as a result, substantially different. The video is a pure performance demonstration.

Is probably not a case then that both Pagani and Koenigsegg most viewed videos are performance demonstrations respectively for the Zonda R and Agera RS. The two competitors like Bugatti have a production of fewer than 100 cars per year which all sell for way above £1 million. Along with luxury, rarity, and high prices then, it is engineering at the absolute extreme that has to represent these companies. Of course, fewer resources allocated to online marketing in this case is likely a major variable for these three really small companies when compared to the aforementioned luxury automakers.

SOME CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Porsche as for its EV development shows vision and market knowledge. As online media and virtual entertainment continue to gain traction though, competitors’ strategy aligns with successful content, and the quality level grows accordingly and increasingly faster. This means that more of this and even better can be expected in the future, but also that incoming VR and AR integrations are likely to bring a further leap forward soon.