Photo: Auto Insurance Center
Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launched Instagram in October 2010, and by July 2012 it hit 80 million users. They didn’t go on alone for long, considering that two years later Facebook threw a decisive $1 billion dollar bid and took over. Heck, it's thanks to the online photo app selfies exist as a stand alone culture, and Kim Kardashian became famous. But did it influence the automotive industry?
If we were to take the recent results of a study conducted by Auto Insurance Center as granted, then it’s safe to say that up to some level the feedback for a car model reflects on Instagram. Unlike what some of you people think, it’s not the Tesla car that was most often hashtagged on the online app. Their study puts BMW first, while Jeep places second, but to understand how this works we need to check out the methodology first.
The research has examined more than 4.6 million Instagram posts created by users between January 2011 and July 2015. These posts were geotagged within the United States, which means they included specific GPS coordinates corresponding to American soil. They also contained the name of the car brands in hashtagged form. These criteria take out a lot of fans who just haven’t used the same method to praise their favorite automaker, let us not forget that.
Nevertheless, the number of posts is big enough to get a bigger picture. The company used this data to determine the volume of posts for each brand in each state as well as the total volume of posts for each brand nationally. They also compared posts to sales for each auto manufacturer, making use of the most recent 2015 year-to-date numbers from The Wall Street Journal’s Market Data Center.
The results are quite impressive, to be honest. It turns out BMW is America’s Most Instagrammed car brand by far, with Jeep holding the second spot in the ranking, but there’s a catch to it. You can’t just compare BMW with Ferrari or Lamborghini for instance because the former sells a lot more cars in total. The exotic sportscars and supercars come in small numbers; you simply don’t have enough on the streets to match them with BMW or Ford.
In terms of preferences by each state, BMWs and Jeeps win again, capturing the top spot in 21 and 19 states respectively.
Getting back to what we were saying earlier, it’s important that we mention Tesla cars have not been included in this chart. There’s no way of telling what popularity the American-made EVs have online. You could, however, try to check it out yourself by simply using the hashtag, although the app will probably take the entire world into consideration.
The research has examined more than 4.6 million Instagram posts created by users between January 2011 and July 2015. These posts were geotagged within the United States, which means they included specific GPS coordinates corresponding to American soil. They also contained the name of the car brands in hashtagged form. These criteria take out a lot of fans who just haven’t used the same method to praise their favorite automaker, let us not forget that.
Nevertheless, the number of posts is big enough to get a bigger picture. The company used this data to determine the volume of posts for each brand in each state as well as the total volume of posts for each brand nationally. They also compared posts to sales for each auto manufacturer, making use of the most recent 2015 year-to-date numbers from The Wall Street Journal’s Market Data Center.
The results are quite impressive, to be honest. It turns out BMW is America’s Most Instagrammed car brand by far, with Jeep holding the second spot in the ranking, but there’s a catch to it. You can’t just compare BMW with Ferrari or Lamborghini for instance because the former sells a lot more cars in total. The exotic sportscars and supercars come in small numbers; you simply don’t have enough on the streets to match them with BMW or Ford.
Exotic supercars, an Instagram sensation
Even so, every Lamborghini sold corresponds to roughly 606 posts on Instagram, while Ferrari clocks in next with more than 360 posts per unit. Meanwhile, this ratio is 4.2 in BMW’s case and 1.1 with Jeep cars. In other words, Americans may be fond of German breeds, but they love Italian exotics.In terms of preferences by each state, BMWs and Jeeps win again, capturing the top spot in 21 and 19 states respectively.
Getting back to what we were saying earlier, it’s important that we mention Tesla cars have not been included in this chart. There’s no way of telling what popularity the American-made EVs have online. You could, however, try to check it out yourself by simply using the hashtag, although the app will probably take the entire world into consideration.
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