JOY’s Chandler on how MG is reaching the next generation of car owners on Tik Tok
How does a sports car brand secure its future with the next generation of car owners, who are increasingly immune to traditional advertising?
According to JOY head of social, Katie Chandler, the answer lies with social media – or more specifically, Gen Z’s social platform of choice, TikTok.
Speaking at Mumbrella’s Autmotive Summit on Wednesday, Chandler explained that JOY’s client, British automotive brand MG, had shifted its focus away from the traditional ready-to-buy automotive consumer, instead honing in on the pre-sale journey of Gen Z consumers.
“We’re looking at predominantly this kind of pre trigger inspire phase,” said Chandler. “It’s really pivotal and building that brand equity and again think about these these consumers as being quite susceptible as well to that supply chain delay that we’re experiencing in the automotive industry. They might be motivated to buy based on what’s available, versus that specific brand they have developed love for.”
For MG, it was critical to engage with the Gen Z consumer to keep them connected to the brand throughout that “pre trigger inspire phase”.
While Chandler assured the room that strategies across other social media platforms are still important, as a growing proportion of Gen Z users on TikTok have completely turned away from the Meta-owned players, Instagram and Facebook, getting their TikTok strategy right was a priority for JOY and MG.
To get this right, the brand had to totally transform the way they produced content for social. While social media of the past portrayed a sense of aspiration and perfectionism, Genz Z craves relatability – something that is often unable to be generated by the brands themselves, but through partnerships with creators.
“Previously, we had this perfectionism where your Instagram grids are perfectly laid out, absolutely aspirational, and sometimes a little bit unattainable,” explained Chandler. “Now we’re really moving into this entertaining realism phase, which again, is much more authentic, it’s much more connective. And it allows more freedom, when we’re working with brands. But it does require a bit more trust on the brand side to know that, you know, these creators are doing it, because they know that that’s what works with their audience.”
And according to Chandler, convincing client partners to handover the reigns to creators is one of the more difficult aspects of creating engaging TikTok content, requiring complete trust between brand, agency and creator.
“There is a little bit of trust that has to go into it. Partly it’s us kind of setting up – what are the parameters and the kind of safeties that we use,” said Chandler. “So when we’re using creators on TikTok, we still have control over what’s going on, we’re using them as partners. So we still have review and approval of what that content would be.”
For Chandler, the crux of doing brand-creator partnerships right is in “finding a creator who matches with your brand message or purpose or what you’re trying to sell.”
“It’s understanding what is their purpose? What are they actually adding to this? What part of the campaign are they selling?,” she continued. “How are they bringing a different dimension or a different group of people that were potentially not reaching somewhere else, and are we making sure that we’re not getting sucked in just because they have a big following.”
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