Audi Tops Auto Twitter Engagement in February

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 2:00PM EST · Published Mar 14, 6:20AM EDT

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Audi Tops Auto Twitter Engagement in February — © courtesy of Audi USA

[cnxvideo id=”510061″ placement=”ros”]Does Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) sell cars? If so, Audi was helped by the social medium in February. It topped the list of all car brands in Twitter engagement during February, according to research firm ListenFirst Media.

The data show that Audi’s Super Bowl ad that focused on gender inequality drew a large response, but not all of it positive. The ad shows a young girl who wins a soap box derby race against several boys, to a large extent because of guts and smart driving. And it may have been the debate about whether the marketing message was good or bad for women that accounted for part of the Twitter activity. A writer from sports site SB Nation wrote:

It can’t be ignored that this is an advertisement for a car company which has a vested interest in appealing to not only fathers, but also women and girls who will grow to be women who will want to drive cars. It’s a commercial that will air during the most watched event in the United States, the Super Bowl, and thus will have a grand audience of these demographics to connect to. It’s first and foremost, an effort to sell a product.

With that being said, Audi’s ad for the Super Bowl is one of the best yet for this year and in recent memory.

[nativounit]

A writer for Fortune took an opposite view:

The positive pay-off at the end of the spot can’t overcome the negatives that precede it. Yes, she wins the race, but only after it told viewers that no matter how well women do, it won’t be taken seriously. The little girl in the go-cart gets to ride home with her dad in a nice looking Audi, but is that adequate consolation?

ListenFirst Media reported:

Audi’s tweet (about the commercial), which accrued more than 34,000 likes and nearly 12,000 retweets, was posted less than two weeks after the Jan. 21 Women’s March on Washington, D.C. on Jan. 21.

The number of tweets could be much ado about nothing. In the world of Twitter, 34,000 likes is impressive, but nowhere near record-breaking. Audi spent an estimated $2 million for the commercial. That is a lot of money per “like.”

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.