The Creator Strategies Driving Volkswagen Forward (HBBIP #94)

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Folks, I have a confession to make. Not necessarily a shameful confession, but a bit of a surprising one: I have driven a car just seven times in my life.

The very first time was with current CreatorIQ Chief Marketing Officer Brit Starr. True story! Her car, Giants’ Stadium parking lot in San Francisco, April 2017. Given that I still work at CreatorIQ, I totaled neither Brit’s car nor any innocent bystanders. However, that session in the parking lot was enough to determine that driving wasn’t really my thing.

So I took a good long break until July 2023, when, having lived in Los Angeles for over a year, I acceded to reality. As much as I liked taking the bus everywhere, I was beginning to get the sense that LA was a bit of a car town. To that end, I got my learner’s permit, bought a three-pack of lessons, and threw in two practice sessions in a kind friend’s car (not in a parking lot this time). Finally, at the ripe young age of 29, I took my road test on October 12, 2023.

In Los Angeles, you’re allowed up to 15 deducted points for minor infractions, assuming you don’t rack up any ‘critical fails,’ which sound pretty scary (watch out, innocent bystanders!). Reader, I’m proud to announce that on my very first road test, ya boi passed with a mere 12 points deducted. C’s get degrees, and I got a license. Look how happy I was!

Proof I have a license 

In my defense, I didn’t know that they would use the photo they’d used for my learner’s permit as my license photo. Also in my defense, I didn’t know on the day I went to the DMV to get my learner’s permit that they’d need to take my photo at all. If I had, maybe I would have shaved and/or smiled.

Savvy readers will note that I’ve now identified seven instances of driving. Sure enough, I haven’t gotten behind the wheel since receiving my license. Moving from Los Angeles to New York has something to do with that.

Why do I bring up my history with driving? Well, besides for hopefully providing some amusing fodder for a newsletter intro, because the automotive space is blowing up with creator activity right now. While I’m not the world’s most qualified person to talk about cars and what have you, I do know a thing or two about creators, so this seems like something I ought to discuss.

So hop in the metaphorical car with me, if not the literal car (please, for your sake and mine, not the literal car), and let’s take a spin down the creator marketing highway! We’ll be telling a good amount of automotive stories in the coming months, so let’s kick things off with an iconic car brand that’s making some serious moves on social.

The Top Brand of All Time (of the Week): Volkswagen

Truly the car of the people, Volkswagen has a storied history. It’s always fun to see storied brands adapt to creator marketing, and if the numbers are to be believed, Volkswagen will enjoy a bright future, too.

Over the past five years, 2020 to 2024, Volkswagen’s growth in key metrics across four key markets (the U.S., Europe, Germany, and Worldwide) followed the same general trajectory.

Volkswagen Impressions (EU): 2020 - 2024

First things first, Volkswagen’s impressions have gone through the sunroof in recent years, with a particular spike in 2024. This marks quite the turnaround from 2021—more than 10x, in fact. While these are European numbers, Volkswagen’s American and global impressions follow a similar pattern.

Longtime readers of this newsletter, and perhaps even short-time readers, know that when I see a big spike in impressions, I’m thinking ‘TikTok.’ But TikTok doesn’t usually (key word ‘usually’) translate into this kind of growth in engagements:

Volkswagen Engagements (EU): 2020 - 2024

While things have shifted a bit versus the pattern set by impressions—Volkswagen’s engagements drop in 2022, not 2021—we once again see a big spike in 2024. Another sign that this spike might not have been driven by TikTok? We’re once again looking at European numbers. Though there are exceptions (which tend to be from the world of beauty and skincare), relative to its standing in the U.S., TikTok hasn’t caught on to the same degree across the pond.

Speaking of the U.S., just to round out our growth stats for Volkswagen, here’s a classic, HBBIP-approved chart of Volkswagen’s stateside EMV:

Volkswagen EMV (US): 2020 - 2024

Clear, clean, consistent growth, again with a big jump in 2024. What’s not to like?

Notably, across all markets, Volkswagen achieved this growth without drastic expansions of its creator count or post count. While these metrics did jump a little in 2024, sparking the big spikes in other metrics seen above, they remained pretty flat from 2020 through 2023, and even the growth in 2024 wasn’t as drastic as we’ve seen in other metrics.

Here’s Volkswagen’s U.S. creator count, just to illustrate this point:

Volkswagen Creator Count (US): 2020 - 2024

So what helped Volkswagen accelerate in 2024? To solve that question, let’s get back to the platform discussion. Here we see what was driving all those impressions in the U.S.—as I suspected, it wasn’t TikTok:

Channel Breakdown for Volkswagen (US)

It turns out that when you break down the numbers, Volkswagen actually turns into Mercedes. The more you know!

Meanwhile, in Europe, things skew even more toward YouTube, and less toward TikTok (and a bit less Mercedes-ish, too):

Channel Breakdown for Volkswagen (EU)

So as we see, when it came to driving impressions for Volkswagen, YouTube was playing just as dominant a role as Instagram, and both brands ranked above TikTok. This is an outlier compared to the platform dynamics I’ve seen for other verticals, but thanks to our quite nifty Creator Marketing Industry Benchmarks Calculator (yes, yet another shameless plug), I can see that it’s not necessarily an outlier for automotive brands:

• Across posts from creators of all follower tiers, automotive brands in the U.S. averaged 167.8M impressions from Instagram, compared to 104.6M impressions from TikTok.
• Across posts from creators of all follower tiers, automotive brands in Europe averaged 129.1M impressions from Instagram, compared to 53.2M impressions from TikTok.

However, it didn’t bear up for the automotive industry at large that YouTube drove more impressions than TikTok, so it’s possible that Volkswagen is just particularly YouTube-heavy. And it’s true that when you look at some of the brand’s top global creators, they include channels like the Electric Viking, an Australian car news platform dedicated to EVs, or Salvage Rebuilds UK, an outlet dedicated to (you guessed it) rebuilding salvaged cars in the U.K. In fact, five of Volkswagen’s top 10 global EMV-drivers were YouTube channels, a high proportion given the general spreads that I see.

But there was more to Volkswagen’s growth than YouTube. Across all channels, across all nations, Volkswagen is using creators to advance key aspects of company programming. From TikTok ads in South Africa touting the Polo Vivo to German Reels promoting the GOLF GTI Roadster to Brazilian TikTokers taking the T-Cross for a spin, Volkswagen has found a successful model by empowering auto-obsessed creators to talk about what they know best. The results are clear: greater visibility for Volkswagen on social media, and greater recognition for some of the brand’s most important offerings.

Plus, creators are how I learned that Volkswagen also does cycling, as seen from the massive popularity of YouTube channels like Global Cycling Network (GCN) and GCN Tech—two more of Volkswagen’s top 10 EMV-drivers. That’s great news for me, given my trials and tribulations with driving. Now I just need to learn how to ride a bike. (But that’s a subject for another newsletter…)

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