Using data to create a brand magazine for luxury automotive consumers

The idea of using data to create a brand magazine - let alone an automotive magazine - isn't always explored when it comes to planning content for printed publications.

But as with digital marketing, data should underpin all automotive content marketing. 

Often a content agency may be called on to simply editorialise the brand and use journalistic nouse to understand the target consumer and generate editorial that will interest them.

Using data to create a brand magazine and branded content

While data insight is fuelling content and its distribution in the digital space, it can also inspire powerful and relevant print content too. And for print journalists/content creators, this is often more of a revelation as they’re not seeing the likes, shares and comments that meets content when distributed digitally to gain some ‘live’ response from the audience.

Any digital content creators will be using a number of sources to understand and evaluate search and social content. Tools like Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic add real value in understanding consumer online behaviour and help generate content strategies while social media listening tools take this to another level in understanding how consumers are talking about certain subjects -and on which channels. But when you add in tools like GlobalWebIndex, you’re able to look at things from another perspective and understand what your target consumers actually wants.

The luxury automotive consumer

At Dialogue we’ve long known the importance of print and how it supports retention and delivers brand loyalty - and are well versed in the creation of an automotive magazine.

We know from our work with Harley-Davidson that the Harley Owners Group magazine plays a key role in engendering community as well as creating a platform for further sales: 62% of HOG members are inspired to attend an event, 26% inspired to test a new model and 35% inspired to engage with the brand. Discover more about the Harley Davidson brand community.

We also produce an automotive magazine for Bentley, which plays an important role in customer loyalty and has proven to drive sales from the print magazine itself.

But we wanted to go further and find out how the luxury automotive consumer related to print in 2020 and turned to data insight to do so.

In order to answer the question, 'how to use content to create a brand magazine?', we’ve collaborated with global audience intelligence consultancy entSight on the report, Download Driving Success: The Value of Print to the Luxury Automotive Industry to evaluate the behaviour of 50,000 global luxury automotive consumers in regard to print formats, using a variety of paid for research tools to do so.

The insight covers both men and women of all age groups who self-identify as being in the top two wealth tiers and also as car consumers, either owning or planning to own a car in the next 12 months.

The research has provided a wealth of highly valuable insight from brand affinity and behaviour to content itself, but what was especially exciting is the fact that automotive luxury consumers still very much value print and that it plays a prominent role in their lives - no matter the age group.

Our report also reveals how print plays a role in brand discovery and the significant regional differences to the luxury consumers’ behaviour. It also explores their motivations and the subjects that most matter to them - in other words, everything you need to do through print to appeal to the luxury car consumer.

Of course, it’s still important to excite and delight but using data to create a print magazine is key in creating the kind of product that you can guarantee works for your consumer.