TikTokers Love BMWs, Are More Interested In Cars Than SUVs

TikTok has fast become a social media craze around the world, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that automakers are trying to make their presence felt. By far the most successful has been BMW.

Dick Lovett, an automotive retailer in the U.K., has looked at all hashtags mentioning luxury cars brands and counted the views on the TikToks using them. It found that BMW-related hashtags had received 22 billion views as of June 15, 2021, when the data was collected.

That’s more than twice as many as the next most viewed luxury car brand on Tiktok and, in some ways, comes as a result of BMW’s own interaction with the app. The #the1challenge, for example, was launched by BMW in 2019 on Tiktok and Instagram and challenged influencers and users to dance to the music of Big Gigantic. At the heart of the social media campaign was the challenge to include the BMW 1-Series in the dance.

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“TikTok is another highly dynamic and internationally fast-growing social media channel that we’re using to promote the BMW brand, tapping into a young, digitally savvy target group,” said Jörg Poggenpohl, Global Senior Director of Digital Marketing at BMW.

The second most popular brand was BMW’s rival Audi, with 9.3 billion views. The brand did get a consolation prize, though, as the TT was the single most oft-mentioned model in TikTok hashtags with 5.5 billion views. The best a BMW model could muster was the 1.3 billion views the M4 brought in.

Curiously, BMW and Audi aren’t joined by the third musketeer in the premium German automaking world, Mercedes. The brand doesn’t appear on the top eight list, seeming to not have tapped into the youth-oriented app.

Also interesting to note, the vehicles that track well in this study are primarily cars, not SUVs. The three favorite BMWs on the app are the M4, the M3, and the M2, followed by the X1 in fourth place. Moreover, only one SUV, the Q7, appears on Audi’s charts and it’s in 10th place while Jaguar, which comes in third place as far brands are concerned, has its first SUV, the I-Pace, come in at fourth behind the XE, the XF, and the F-Type.

Porsche, the brand known for motorsports dominance and the 911, is in fourth place and, surprisingly, two out of its top three models are SUVs. Although the Panamera is the most popular Porsche on TikTok, the Macan and the Cayenne come in second and third.

With the exception of Porsche and Land Rover, though, the charts are dominated by cars, not SUVs. It will be interesting, then, to see if what’s popular on a youth-oriented app predicts a future trend away from the seemingly all-conquering SUV.