I seem to be seeing more and more interesting digital marketing for autos. Maybe it’s just become more salient to me since a did a Digital Marketing Seminar for Chinese auto-marketers in Beijing. Sponsored by Tencent and organized by CEIBS, it was a very interesting group.

One of the requests they made was that I present some of what I considered to by leading, marketing-cutting-edge (which is often NOT technical cutting-edge), digital marketing. So I started clipping things as I see them. Please jump in and add more.

VW Tiguan Cross-country

One simple, effective, on-brand, and with a twist, TVC that has great viral video potential, I saw courtesy of Creativity OnLine, was a  piece by DDB Sydney for VW. Take a look yourself:

VW LinkedIn

Then I came across another VW while doing some research on marketing with LinkedIn. One of the first brands to get linked up (sorry) with the LinkedIn API.

This ran in the Netherlands, April (2011) I think. It’s called “LinkedUit” which is LinkedOut in Dutch. The way it works, you can challenge another LinkedIn user to see who has the “strongest” profile. The overall winner gets the VW Passat.

The DigitalBuzz Blog, has the branding angle as that, like LinkedIn profiles, the VW Passat is fully loaded with standard features. Mashable claims the campaign “supports the tagline, ‘Nogal vol van zichzelf,’ which translates to ‘Quite full of himself.’”

Social Times believes they’re ‘comparing the various powerful features of business moguls—lots of connections, great recommendations and more—to all the powerful features of the Passat’. Which is sort of what DigitalBuzz Blog thinks too.

Whatever, so the brand link is a little bit of a stretch. But think of all the potential customer info that pours out of those LinkedIn accounts.

What’s more, as Simple Zesty point out, there’s also an end for LinkedIn. It actually encourages people to fill out more details in their LinkedIn profiles!

Volkswagen Linkeduit from Fethi Uluak on Vimeo.

It’s by t Achtung in Amsterdam