Keller Fay Car Talk
by John Moore TalkTrack Conversationalist, November 9, 2010Tags: Automotive, Brands, Keller Fay Group, offline, online, research, Social media, TalkTrack®, WOM, word of mouth
The beleaguered automotive industry is revving up its sales engine. Chrysler, Ford, Honda, and Nissan have all recently reported year-over-year sales increases of more than 15%. That’s remarkable news given the still sluggish U.S. economy.
There’s much to talk about with the automotive industry from these strong sales figures to the still top-of-mind government bailout of the industry to the introduction of innovative hybrid cars to fallout from Toyota’s quality concerns stemming from recent recalls.
Keller Fay recently pulled together a comprehensive analysis of nearly 100,000 word-of-mouth (WOM) offline as well as online conversations Americans have had from September 2008 through August 2010. This two-year study covers the auto industry crisis and Keller Fay’s findings detail the polarity of brand-specific conversations as well as the credibility differences between WOM about cars from men and WOM about cars from women.
While most of this data is reserved for Keller Fay clients, I was given access to rifle through some of the findings. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be sharing marketing insights and implications from this TalkTrack® analysis on WOM in the automotive industry.
First up is an overview look at the volume of brand-related conversations Americans have about cars.
One in three Americans mentions something to someone every day about a car brand or a marketing activity of a car company. This equates to, according to Keller Fay data, 116 million daily conversations about the car industry happening every day offline (person-to-person) and online (Internet, email, text).
Of these 116 million daily conversations about the automotive industry, Keller Fay estimates 61% of these conversations are mostly positive while only 11% are mostly negative. (For comparison, the positive/negative sentiment split for technology brands is 63% mostly positive to 9% mostly negative.)
Despite the turmoil of the automotive industry in the past two years, Americans are much more likely to say something positive about a car brand than something negative. (In an upcoming post, we’ll dig deeper into the positive/negative polarity conversations of specific car brands.)
As an individual brand, Ford is the most talked-about car brand and has been since Keller Fay began tracking automotive industry conversations.
It’s interesting to roll up the brand portfolios of major car manufacturers and compare their market share with their TalkShare™. (TalkShare™, in this instance, being the percentage share a specific brand is mentioned in everyday conversations about cars.) Notice, in the chart below, the similarity between the market share of a car manufacturer and its TalkShare™.
This comparison gives credence to the marketing adage of the more talkable a brand is the greater its market share. Also, when a brand has greater TalkShare™ than market share, like General Motors and Ford, it bodes well for future sales leading to more market share.
That’s just an overview look. In upcoming posts, we’ll delve into what is driving brand-related conversations about cars and where such conversations take place. Additionally, as mentioned above, we’ll look at the sentiment of these conversations, especially as it relates to the auto crisis, government bailout of the industry, and the Toyota recall issues. Finally, we’ll share brand-specific statistics and trending analysis about what people are saying about the most popular car brands.
So buckle up. This is going to be a fun ride.
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