We had a long talk with Charles Turner, Group digital manager at Motul and with Alessio Esposito, Associate Director at Social Chain supporting Motul on social media activation. We discussed why social media are key in 2019, the love of fans for the Motul brand and why relevant content is gaining importance lately.
Charles, we had a talk 2 years ago on Motul’s social media strategy activating your audience and fans. How does the new collaboration with Social Chain fits in?
We’re still at an early stage, putting the foundations in place to get to our end goals. These goals have been defined; we have built a three-year plan to get towards them. It is slowly going in the right direction. We are adapting a new strategy on social media and we are now learning from what we are doing on online to increase our reach, analyze and optimize the content which will indirectly impact our objectives. Motul is in the industry for 160 years, but this world is going through a digital transformation. As a leading brand in the niche market of premium oils, we need to stay in the lead, also on social media. We’re currently integrating our social strategy on different business levels, mainly by bringing the right content to the right audience. We are evolving to ‘social first’ content. You need a different content approach in America than in Russia to reach your fans. It’s a social transformation, because one man’s Disco is another man’s Funk!
Alessio, in the past Motul’s social content that was based on sharing pretty pictures and advertising video’s, do you think this kind of content is losing impact?
Yes and no, we have been working on social media since their rise. We are currently operating in 4 different countries and keep our finger at the pulse. The social first strategy is quite a challenge for Motul. We have been focusing on a few quick wins for Motul. Most social media users are quite passive, they scroll through the pages or feeds, without really interacting with a brand, passing the time away. First of all, you still need excellent content. But we adapted the way we bring it: making storyboards, reworking content formats and creating ‘social hooks’, which has an impact on people’s online retention. Instead of one long video, we create five shorter more digestible video’s, f.e. top five tips from a mechanic here in Le Mans. We try to attract viewers by providing them interesting content, not just throwing beautiful adverts to our viewers, that’s not the reason people visit social media.