Shack evaluated India's three top-selling luxury car brands – BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz – to derive a comparative benchmark of their standing on social platforms. To request for a detailed report, you can reach us at info@shack.co.in

1. SOCIAL LEADERBOARD
LUXURY CAR BRANDS: 4th Aug – 17th Aug 2012

2. 1:
INDEX:
 SOCIAL LEADERBOARD:
week-on-week performance of top 3 luxury car brands…
 SUMMARY
Digital strategy for experience events going astray like lost sheep?…
 OBSERVATIONS
 RECONNECT GRADE:
o BMW
o AUDI
o MERCEDES-BENZ
 WHY COMMUNITIES?
 METHODOLOGY:
the research process…
 ABOUT SHACK
©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands

3. 2:
SOCIAL LEADERBOARD
4th August – 17th August 2012
12,00,000
7.9% 37.4%
11,00,000
10.3%
Community Size (members)
10,00,000
BMW (W5)
9,00,000
2.8% BMW (W6)
Audi (W3)
8,00,000
Audi (W4)
Merc (W5)
7,00,000
4.1% Merc (W6)
6,00,000 5.9%
5,00,000
- 9.0% 18.0% 27.0% 36.0% 45.0%
Activity Grade
Brand Community Size Share (%) Activity Grade
Current 1w ago Current 1w ago Current 1w ago
BMW 11,25,269 11,16,822 39.9% 40.3% 37.4% 7.9%
Audi 10,91,846 10,56,291 38.7% 38.1% 3.6% 3.1%
Merc 6,01,776 6,00,387 21.3% 21.6% 5.9% 4.1%
©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands

4. 3:
SUMMARY
Digital strategy for experience events going
astray like lost sheep?
The dawn of branding and
marketing signalled that the
success of a company was not
dependent on just a world-class
product anymore. Now,
consumers buy in anticipation of
owning and using the product. For instance, if a consumer buys a
luxury sports sedan, with it she/he also buys the experience of motor-
racing.
The highly interactive digital ecosystem offers a tremendous
opportunity for brands and marketeers to amplify this experience
among its target audience. But how far has the thousands of photo
likes, contest entries and live tweets helped brands in achieving the
aforementioned goal? We investigate.
The Buddh International Circuit has created an avenue for the likes of BMW,
Audi, Mercedes and Porsche to showcase the superiority of their luxury line.
They organize track day events where select owners and a few 'influencers'
get to experience the car on the circuit under expert guidance. The objective
of such initiatives is to strengthen the association of brand owners,
©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands

5. 4:
enthusiasts and loyalists with the brand’s attributes. As Audi India head
Michael Perschke says "The Audi sportscar experience has been developed
in line with the Audi brand's 3 core value pillars - sportiness,
progressiveness and sophistication. These qualities and an exciting format
together create a very unique and ideal opportunity for all car enthusiasts
out there who have always wanted to dynamically explore sports cars, but
have never had a chance to do so."
Here, the role of the social web, because of its pervasiveness and
interactivity, is to provide a similar user experience to brand lovers not part
of the drive event and “earn” new brand followers through the word-of-
mouth subsequently generated. However, ShackMatrix’s measure of the
Reconnect Grade observed that Audi and Mercedes-Benz did not improve its
appeal with racing enthusiasts as a result of these initiatives and there is a
lot of improvement desired in this respect. The focus of these online
initiatives is volume rather than the quality of the engagement.
The concept of using influential individuals or groups to build up public
support for an initiative is not a new idea. Edward Bernays, regarded as the
'father of PR', widely advocated and practiced it for the likes of P&G and
Lucky Strike. But the digital ecosystem offers brand’s the ability to provide a
continuous brand experience that complements the traditional BTL
marketing efforts and sustains consumer association in the long term
increasing average levels of brand recall, recognition and image. In order to
tap this opportunity, marketeers must rethink their strategy and invest
in building communities, like the Harley Owners Group, that gives members
©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands

6. 5:
a sense of ownership towards the brand. Only then can a brand create true
brand advocates who help market experiences to potential consumers
through word-of-mouth.
OBSERVATIONS
 Reaction and feedback about potential buyers’ test drive experience
should have logically followed the launch of the new BMW 3-series
which would have pushed up the Reconnect Grade for the brand’s
message of ‘driving pleasure’. On the contrary, the grade showed that
only 1 in every 100 brand followers connected with the brand’s
message. BMW’s Activity score is still riding on the strength of
syndicating 3-series reviews by auto magazines and TV shows, which
will be hard to sustain once the initial coverage dies off.
 Audi took the contest route to provide a chance to their fans to
experience the new Audi A6 TDI at the Buddh International Circuit.
However, only 1% of their activity appealed to racing enthusiasts which
raises questions on the efficacy of contests in the social space to attract
the right audience for niche events. Audi also covered an off-roading
tour, with Gul Panag as one of the travellers, in order to highlight the
superior features of their new 'Quattro Drive' technology. However, this
brand association only resulted in 5 in every 500 brand community
members connecting with this theme.
 Mercedes-Benz's AMG drive academy initiative targeted at "real motor-
racing enthusiasts" failed to stir up online buzz as the motor-racing
theme appealed to only 3 in 200 brand community members.
©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands

7. 6:
RECONNECT GRADE
4th August – 10thAugust 2012
9.0%
Reconnect Grade
6.0%
4.0%
3.0%
1.9%
1.1% 1.1%
0.2% 0.04% 0.02%
-
2.5%
2.0%
Reconnect Grade
1.5% 1.3%
1.1% 1.0%
1.0%
0.6%
0.5%
0.1% 0.01% 0.00%
-
2.5%
2.0%
2.0% 1.7%
Reconnect Grade
1.5%
1.5%
1.1%
0.9%
1.0%
0.5% 0.3% 0.2%
-
©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands

8. 7:
RECONNECT GRADE
11th August – 17thAugust 2012
9.0% 8.1%
Reconnect Grade 6.7%
6.0%
3.1%
3.0%
1.8% 1.7%
1.0%
0.2%
-
2.5%
2.0%
2.0%
Reconnect Grade
1.5%
1.1%
1.0%
1.0%
0.5%
0.2% 0.2%
0.03% 0.03%
-
2.5%
2.0%
2.0%
Reconnect Grade
1.4%
1.5% 1.3%
1.1%
1.0%
0.5% 0.2% 0.2% 0.1%
-
©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands

9. 8:
About the Social Leaderboard
The Leaderboard updates the results derived from our internal tools and
methodologies on a bi-monthly basis, based on which we will bring out our
conclusions. Shack uses a proprietary grading mechanism
ShackMatrix™ to derive the Authority, Activity and Reconnect Grades,
which are key determinants of a brand’s social presence. Read more
about the Matrix and Grades.
Why Communities?
Create, Connect, Curate — The Shack Manifesto for Building
Communities
With the social online world becoming an important cog in a customer’s
relationship with a brand, there is a need for a common language that can
give meaning to the seemingly unstructured social data scattered across
platforms that represents a brand’s interaction with its core community.
As has happened with the introduction of any new communication medium,
practitioners are making the mistake of using the measuring stick (such as
views and reach) of traditional advertising media to gauge success in the
social web. For over a half a century, we have been thinking about
©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands

10. 9:
marketing in terms of campaigns with a very clear beginning, middle and an
end. But the online digital world is currently in the process of being rebuilt
around people and what we know as the social web, in a few years, would
simply be the web.
Therefore, long term success for brands depends on leveraging these
human relationships to create a strong sense of community around
products, concepts and values that are dearest to the brands.
How we measure effectiveness in Online Communities?
The ShackMatrix™ is a proprietary framework that enables assessment of a
brand’s digital footprint in a holistic way. It is a common language designed to
understand the value of a brand’s online efforts expressed through 5 grades that
combine the understanding of traditional branding with the dynamics of a social
online world.
 Presence Grade: Measures how well is the brand represented on digital
platforms.
 Authority Grade: Measures how authoritative is a brand’s owned-
channels for information on the brand and its products.
 TG Grade: Measures the percentage of the desired target group mix
active on the brand’s owned platforms.
 Activity Grade: Measures the level of activity on existing channels.
 Re-Connect Grade: Measures the extent to which community members
connect and identify the brand with the attributes desired by it.
©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands

11. 10:
Data Methodology
We take online performance as a holistic concept. While size of the brand’s
community and level of activity are important factors, the profile of the TG,
the authority of the brand’s platforms and its recall are also equally
important ingredients.
In calculating the ShackMatrix™, we assign weights to the different metrics
on individual platforms in order to combine them into a single comparable
grade that is relevant to the digital objectives of the brand.
The weights are decided based on the relative effectiveness of the platform
to a brand’s community as well as the brand’s own digital goals.
Data Validity and Integrity
We source the data from the brand’s official digital properties. Our scope is
restricted by the data made available through the APIs of the social
platforms we cover.
The coverage of data in this report is restricted to Facebook and Twitter.
More detailed and granular metric studies are done for clients on a project
basis.
©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands

12. 11:
About Shack
Shack is a digital marketing company which brings together brands and their
customers in carefully crafted, wholesome communities, providing exceptional
experiences for all.
We leverage communities for brands:
In order to create and maintain buzz around your brand you need your target
audience to form lasting relationships with your brand.
We build platforms for the communities:
Being a one-stop solution for all your community building and web-based marketing
needs, we craft comprehensive campaigns, based on careful strategy, encompassing
an entire digital eco-system.
We develop content for the platforms:
Along with creating engagement tools both online and off-line we also encourage and
facilitate generation of remarkably effective and compelling content, in a methodical
manner by our own team, and in a random manner, by your community members.
We measure the impact on the brand:
You need to monitor the impact that the campaign has on your brand. This impact is
not something hypothetical, it is hard, tangible, three-dimensional data that not only
tells you where you presently stand, but also tells you where you need to go and
what path you need to follow with the help of Shack’s proprietary Digital Ecosystem
Management tool. Website || Blog || Twitter
©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands