Have You Seen OnStar’s Unique Social Media Campaign For The FMV?

You may not have noticed it, but OnStar is hard at work promoting its newest accessory — OnStar FMV (or For My Vehicle) — on the social network Twitter. The GM subsidiary is targeting Twitter users who tweet about their desire for particular items, such as GPS units — and pitching them FMV, which brings OnStar features to non-GM vehicles.

The effort is not a paid advertising campaign and does not present itself in any form of official Twitter ads; instead, OnStar sends a reply to each user whose tweet could be relevant to the OnStar FMV. We didn’t count, but these messages have been going out a couple hundred times a day for the last week. For example, a Twitter user tweeted several days ago:

“Keeping up with my eagles while I’m Christmas shopping!!”

OnStar replied with the following tweet:

“@[twitter user name omitted] Now anyone can have the safety and connectivity of OnStar FMV! Enjoy special savings for the holidays: [link]”

Clicking on the link in OnStar’s tweet sends the user to a landing page containing a special $199 offer for the FMV (the mirror is usually $299). The user can click the “Learn more” button, which takes them to this page.

In effect, OnStar (or whoever is behind the promotional campaign on OnStar’s behalf, which seems to be ThisMoment.com) is mining the Twitter stream in search of potential FMV buyers. Far from showing (often irrelevant and not very engaging) advertisements, this is a unique and interesting approach to marketing, made possible by the wild, wacky, and transformative world of social media.

We’ll keep our ears to the social media ground and eyes on the computer screen to gauge how OnStar’s social media campaign is performing, but will leave you with the following question: will this kind of marketing effort work? The crazy marketer within us wants to know…