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Volkswagen Replaces Corporate Website with Facebook Site in Ads

Submitted by Jason Smith on Sun, 06/21/2009 - 22:11

German car maker Volkswagen has dropped the corporate website URL from its recent set of television ads and promoted a new Facebook URL: www.facebook.com/vw. The Facebook site starts with a product overview page with links to Facebook group pages for each of the individual cars where visitors can become "fans" of the cars.

Jetta Registers over 16,000 Fans

Currently, each car in the VW lineup has between 350 and 16,216 fans (the Jetta is most popular). The group page also features official photos and a video with the most recent television ad. The Jetta group has customer posted images – currently 46 images. How's that for brand affinity?

Marketing Benefits of Facebook

Creating a Facebook destination can offer a company a number of benefits:

  1. It provides easier tracking for the ad campaign.
  2. Offers an opportunity for consumers to immediately register their interest in using an application they are comfortable with (no additional registration on your "corporate" site)
  3. Provides another distribution channel for content: photos and video.
  4. Turns consumers into your advertisers: on this site other Jetta owners are troubleshooting a problem posted by a user.

The Risks of Social Media Campaigns

There are some risks with starting a social media campaign – foremost is the need to monitor the posts and have a strategy for responding to negative comments. Before beginning a campaign, you'll need a management and marketing team comfortable with this reality.