automotive

NASCAR, Action Movies Drive Brand Chatter

Transformer/Camaro

If your main takeaway from the "Transformers" movies -- in addition to a fresh appreciation for Dramamine -- was that all those Corvettes and Camaros were the embodiment of bad marketing spend, think again. J.D. Power and Associates' "Web Intelligence Tribe Analysis" says product placement and racing won over 20-somethings.

The study parsed online comments of 14- to-18-year-olds and "early careerists" (between 22 and 29 years old) and found that the two groups diverged on brand preference and interest: Teens commented most positively about import brands, and 20-somethings most frequently discussed domestic brands, per the firm. Among the latter group, NASCAR and action movies drove Web chatter about the Chevrolet and Dodge brands. So did nostalgia references to models such as the Chevrolet Camaro and the Dodge Challenger.

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Michael Cooperman, senior director, consumer marketing and product development at J.D. Power, says NASCAR and the movies help domestics more than imports. "Chevy, Dodge, Honda and Toyota are all spending money in NASCAR," he says, "but the fact that consumers are talking about the domestic brands means their association is having a positive halo effect. Consumers are talking about it, and talking in a positive way."

Cooperman says the flip side to the NASCAR finding was that when teens and those in their early 20s talk about the foreign automakers, they are talking about quality and reliability, "and they definitely think the domestic automakers have missed a lot within those areas."

Automotive brands that indexed highest among Gen Y versus the general blogosphere were Dodge among 20-somethings and Toyota among teens. The next most resonant brands among those in their 20s were Chevrolet, Toyota, Land Rover, Mazda, Jeep, Lexus Honda Ford and Buick. Among teens, the brands that indexed highest after Toyota were Honda, Audi, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Jeep, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Nissan and BMW.

Lexus and Land Rover are the premium brands discussed among the early careerists as the brands they most aspire to own.

But teens have also apparently begun to demythologize the car partly because they are less interested in incurring the costs involved with maintaining and fueling a vehicle and because of social media, which allows virtual congregation instead of physical. Cooperman says that cars, which had been the central tool for teen socializing, have been replaced by the digital realm.

"The surprising thing to us is that when you and I were in that age range, we couldn't wait to drive. Conversations of what car are you going to get when you get a car -- those were really prevalent in lunchtime conversations," he says. "But that level of enthusiasm isn't prevalent in current teens. Our takeaway is that technology, social media tools -- what cell phone you get -- is what matters."

The study analyzed more than 300,000 spontaneous online conversations among teens and more than 475,000 online conversations among 20-something young professionals in the blogosphere and on message boards between January and August this year.

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