Online video has changed how auto marketers connect with customers

LOS ANGELES -- Chrysler-Fiat marketing chief Olivier Francois hopes he has this summer's pop-music hit in his back pocket, the thumping soundtrack to a Fiat 500 commercial that has evolved into a full-length, party-themed video for a song with "Fiat" in its title.

"If it works, we will have written a page in the marketing books," with Super Bowl-sized exposure on YouTube, Francois said in an interview at the Automotive News Marketing Seminar in Los Angeles.

If it doesn't, the project could end up where most automakers' online video promotions do: languishing on YouTube and quickly forgotten.

Online video has redrawn the boundaries of auto marketing, giving companies a chance to sketch a broader story line around their products, break the conventions of TV and connect with customers in new ways. The auto industry is second only to video game makers in embracing the medium for its video advertising, according to a recent study by Kantar Media.

Sometimes, automakers strike gold with a video that goes viral, racking up millions of views online and heaps of good will with customers. Super Bowl spots from Toyota, Chrysler and Hyundai all received more than 10 million views on YouTube and were some of the most widely viewed commercials of this year's big game. Volkswagen's 2011 Super Bowl spot "The Force" is the most viewed auto commercial of all time, according to Visible Measures, an online video marketing and analytics firm that tracks views on YouTube and other video sites.

But for much of advertising's off-season -- that long stretch between Super Bowls -- online videos from automakers and their agencies struggle to go viral. The breakout hits continue to depend on a push from a big-budget launching pad, such as a Super Bowl spot, a movie tie-in or other pop-culture hook.

"Outside of the Super Bowl, they have not had many successes," said Seraj Bharwani, chief analytics officer for Visible Measures.

Marketers gauge the "virality" of a video by the tally of views it gets on YouTube and other sites. Those totals multiply as the video is embedded into other Web sites or shared across social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Standards for a viral hit vary: The most successful automotive spots have gotten tens of millions of YouTube views, while the music video for the pop megahit "Gangnam Style" has topped 1.6 billion.

Automakers have run about 1,100 online video campaigns since 2009, garnering about 1.23 million views each on average, roughly 225,000 fewer views than the overall average among advertisers, according to Visible Measures. During that span, automotive online campaigns accounted for about 11 percent of the more than 10,000 branded online video campaigns yet attracted only 9 percent of all page views.

Automaker videos, Bharwani said, often lack the secret sauce of novelty, humor, topicality and promotional power that compels consumers to share the content with their friends. "It's not like you throw something on YouTube and all of a sudden, everybody's excited about it," he said. "You have to promote, and the promotion has to happen on the class of sites where there is a lot of sharing behavior."

Auto marketers, for their part, say it's all but impossible to create a spot with the express purpose of going viral, and the risks of being provocative on purpose are high in an industry in which brand perceptions are still forming. Missteps, after all, also can go viral.

Hyundai, for instance, recently found itself in hot water for a video spot, produced by the U.K. unit of its ad agency Innocean, depicting a man's failed suicide attempt. Hyundai officials worldwide apologized, but not before the video had stirred a storm of outrage online, on social networks and in the media. Hyundai has since tried to keep the video off YouTube, yet copies continually pop up online.

One of the winners making the rounds now is a 2 1/2-minute film from Audi titled "The Challenge," which received more than 5 million YouTube views -- and reams of media coverage -- within a week of its release this month.

Piggybacking on buzz surrounding the feature film Star Trek Into Darkness (and stealing thunder from Mazda, the film's official marketing partner), the short features two generations of the TV show's Mr. Spock character -- actors Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto -- ribbing each other over the phone en route to a golf outing, the younger Spock, Quinto, in an Audi S7, Nimoy in a Mercedes-Benz CLS550.

"Videos should be compelling, true to the brand and entertaining all at the same time, and all with a hook," an Audi spokesman said. "Given how passionate Audi's fan base is, coupled with the same passion that Mr. Nimoy and Mr. Quinto bring to the table, the stakes are very high. If you strike the wrong note on any level, the backlash could be devastating for a brand."

Jack Hollis, vice president of marketing for Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., agrees that while the prospect of millions of online views is alluring, automakers that try too hard to generate buzz run the risk of alienating their audiences.

"If you push too hard, you become inauthentic, and you become a poser," Hollis told Automotive News.

One Toyota viral hit came from an unlikely place: a 2010 campaign for the Sienna minivan. Surplus funds from the launch budget were used to create "Swagger Wagon," an online video featuring the husband and wife from the van's "Sienna Family" campaign rapping earnestly about the parenting life.

The black-and-white video is filled with rap video satire, such as a toddler struggling with the zipper on his hoodie and the phrase "mother-father" sprinkled into the lyrics. It has been viewed nearly 12 million times on YouTube and is still generating comments three years on.

Tim Morrison, the former marketing executive who oversaw the campaign and is now Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A.'s vice president of customer retention, said "Swagger Wagon" was a last-minute idea that didn't have to go through the normal approval channels because it was online-only.

"The viral-ness of that grew upon itself because it hit a nerve with people who thought it was cool," said Hollis, who was running Scion at the time but has since studied the spot. "It wasn't created to say, 'We're going to have 17 million views.' It was created to say, 'Let's have some fun around the car and these people.'"

Yet "Swagger Wagon" remains an exception. Most spots that blossom online have big creative and promotional budgets behind them. Steve Shannon, vice president of marketing at Hyundai Motor America, says almost all marketers spend large sums on generating views for their videos.

"A lot of what you see, you might think it's organic," he said, but "there is huge money behind putting that content on pre-roll and on the Web everywhere as advertising."

At Chrysler-Fiat, Francois hopes to challenge that convention. The Chrysler global marketing boss produced the song "Sexy People (The Fiat Song)" as the soundtrack to Fiat's "Immigrants" campaign from last summer, in which Fiat 500s leap off picturesque Italian cliffs into the sea and then emerge in New York City.

A four-minute video for the song features Italian pop star Arianna and rapper Pitbull partying on a yacht and dancing on a beach at sunset with dozens of bikini-clad women and shirtless men, along with dozens of Fiat 500s. It's nearing 6 million views on YouTube.

Francois says the "Fiat Song" video came about because Sony Music thought the song was a potential summer hit. He says Chrysler granted Sony the rights to the song in exchange for getting the word "Fiat" in its title. Sony then incorporated footage from commercials Chrysler-Fiat had already shot, requiring no additional spending from Fiat. Sony's distribution arm now has the song making rounds in nightclubs ahead of its June radio release.

"Viral is always experimental. Viral is unpredictable," he said. "Therefore -- and that's my religion -- viral can't cost. I invest time, creativity, energy, networking. ... I don't invest money."

If the song becomes a hit, it's "good for everyone. If not, I still have my ads," Francois said.

"Sexy People" isn't there yet, but Francois is focused on the upside.

"When a song is a real hit -- which this is not today -- it's very frequent that you'll pass 100 million views on YouTube," Francois said. "It happens a lot. For us, 100 million views means a Super Bowl audience."