Instagram for luxury cars: making automotive social media work

Connecting with a willing audience has been something of a smooth transition when it’s come to automotive social media, largely because their product is essentially the marketing.

Of course there are huge amounts of money spent on crafting the look, but when the product is as unique as this, not much needs to happen beyond the photograph.

As a result, luxury car brands have been able to ‘rest on their laurels’ when it comes to automotive social media. The content they’ve been creating brings their brochures to life through some well-worn techniques of shooting the cars themselves in a variety of beautiful and occasionally challenging environments – and naturally, new drone technology has upped everyone’s game, increasing the wow factor.

However, the results mean that profile after profile, they are pretty much indistinguishable – apart from the products themselves.

But with tens of millions of followers across the board and automotive not especially known for its marketing endeavours outside of the trusted big ad and brochure space, these brands have no doubt questioned the need to do anything much more – after all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?

The exclusive nature of luxury was historically perceived to sit at odds with the very openness of social, but other types of luxury brands are now fully embracing it and the tactics used to build and engage an audience.

So how are luxury car brands using Instagram – the channel that ultimately showcases a brand visually at its best?

We looked at the top luxury automotive brands and how they express themselves when it comes to…

Automotive content on Instagram

As above, the majority of luxury automotive brands aren’t veering from the norm; literally appropriating content from other channels for social use.

That’s not to say there’s not some beautiful content…  

Yet most of the luxury brands are spoilt for choice in terms of inspiration for content: their domains of interest reach way beyond the cars themselves and into affiliated areas like motor-racing, events, licensing, sponsorship, clothing and merchandise amongst other things. Of course, this brings its own challenges; how to weight content favourably and how to create a cohesive feel in the fragmented space that is Instagram.

In essence, a luxury brand needs to speak of ostentation, skilled craftsmanship and hard-to-acquire reputation earned over time with prestigious clients.

The former is easily shown with what I’m calling the tried and tested ‘brochure’ method (see above) and the craftsmanship is often painstakingly showcased through high quality close-ups of interiors and features.

In 2019 Bugatti went a step further and included some historical shots featuring it’s motor-racing heritage and association with big names of the day.

We’ve also seen Bugatti weaving its key execs and creatives into the content and amongst the cars.

Of all the brands, Bugatti has the most artistically crafted feed, often using a three-square distribution technique to give a more qualitative look to the feed.

When it comes to reputation, these brands have the luxury of heritage achieved long before Instagram, however, many feature historic glory days as well as new restorations to remind us of their backgrounds.

Ferrari used an innovative way to integrate their historical photos and remind you of their heritage, while keeping true to the aesthetic of their channel.

Collaborations on Instagram

Naturally, Instagram is the perfect space to reveal the type of collaborations luxury brands are known for – particularly around merchandise.

Again, these see our friends opting for highly-stylised versus realistic approaches.

Aston Martin showcases its involvement with its Grand Prix teams but has previously shows it’s at the cutting edge of technology through its involvement with Tag Heuer, Triton Submarines as well as Lego around the James Bond brand.