What’s the “Hype” in Hypercars?
Pagani, Koenigsegg, and McLaren…who’s image comes out on top?
Speed. Performance. Engineering. Adrenaline. Does a luxurious sports car come to your mind? That is the goal of marketers in the hypercar industry, and multiple brands are doing it well. But, who creates the highest quality image and engagement? I decided to look at hypercar brands Pagani, Koenigsegg, and McLaren to find out.
If you really know me, you would know that I am most comfortable engaging with the personal, specifically apparel, sector of the luxury industry. With that in mind, I decided to learn about a market I have had zero exposure to…nice cars.
To start, I didn’t even know what a “hypercar” was. So, who do you turn to in a time like this? Urban Dictionary, that’s right. They defined “hypercar” as: “A newer category of car. A car that has an immense amount of horsepower or has extreme lack of weight. Cars that are more expensive than normal “super cars”.” Okay, so that was a start, but I turned to my own personal “experts” to help me learn more about major players in this industry.
My dad and brother are VERY into the car topic. They completely rebuilt a family-owned red 1966 mustang together in our garage during my sophomore year of college, so discussion of cars has always gone on around me. I have never actually paid close attention to their conversation though. I took advantage of their car passion and asked them what their dream performance, luxury car experience would entail. That is how I came up with the three hypercar brands to dig into.
Before I move on, let me also reiterate that these cars range from $200,000 to over $1 million…yeah, my jaw dropped too.
To analyze the engagement of these hypercar brands, I took a closer look at their social media platforms, particularly Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The chart below provides a breakdown of the stats from each of the three brands’ accounts.
Based off of discussion in my Social Media class for my Global Luxury Management program, I learned that brands should be experiencing at least 1% engagement from their total audience on the average content they publish. Seeing as all of these brands have returns on their average content above the 1% mark (refer to the red numbers in the last row of the chart above), it seems as though the hypercar industry as a whole is doing well with content engagement. None of these three brands were significantly trumping the others.
Will this trend stick around? Or could it die off if hypercars become more saturated and well-known? Or will one brand pull away as the ultimate social media engagement leader? Those are questions that I want to challenge myself and you reading this to stay curious about as the industry develops and changes.
For those of you craving a secondhand adrenaline rush, let me make a quick Netflix recommendation. There is a documentary called “APEX: The story of the hypercar” that provides a great overview and picture of the industry. Enjoy!
Thanks for reading!
#NCStateGLM #LuxeMarketing #Pagani #Koenigsegg #McLaren #LuxuryCars
