Automakers Hire Twitter Influencers as Brand Ambassadors

If you are an influential Twitter user, you might be approached by a major automaker to be its brand ambassador.

Ford, Lexus and BMW are some brands, which are hiring Twitter influencers as an alternative to hiring celebrities. Like in any social groups, there are people who’re more influential than the others. Social networking sites have made those influencers more visible.

Hiring Twitter stars has several advantages. They are definitely more affordable and using the same investment, brands could hire more influencers. Their combined reach could even be stronger than a celebrity’s. People trust people like themselves. Getting social media influencers to represent the brand could be more effective as celebrities are too often used as endorsers; to the point that consumers are getting skeptical.

Ford has used this new endorsement method with some success. Last year, it hired 100 social media influencers to test drive its new Ford Fiesta subcompact and post their impressions on social sites like YouTube, Flickr and Twitter. The campaign generated over seven million views on YouTube and four million mentions on Twitter. It drove 130,000 consumers to its website and 83% were previously non-Ford owners. The Wall Street Journal reported. But it wasn’t revealed how many cars were sold through this campaign.

Similar to engaging bloggers for product reviews, getting social media influencers has similar risk. You can’t control what they write about your brand and the campaign could backfire. Engaging celebrity endorsement is a safer route to gain reach but it comes with a hefty price.