From early April through the first few days of May, the Austin, Texas, and surrounding community have had their share of exposure to the totally new Dodge Dart. (Not your dad or granddad’s Dart, mind you.)
Chrysler Group had six or seven "waves" of journalists, with about 12 to 20+ people in each wave, drive the Dart. Among the waves, a full wave of the more social media savvy journalists took their turn to traverse the Texas countryside in the Dodge Dart. Call them bloggers, influencers, rock stars or whatever. They saw, they tweeted, they typed, they blogged (or will), they journaled (or will) their way through the Dodge Dart drive program.
We've invited bloggers to test drive our vehicles in the past on other programs, and our media fleet is open to the more socially savvy as well. But they haven't always had the full, one-on-one access to the range of designers and engineers as they did this week in Austin.
We had a good mix of people -- some of the big names of online auto media, other auto media who have not had the attention they deserve, hard-core company enthusiasts and several geek/nerdy, tech and/or mom social media influencers who haven't had any relationship with us in the past.
With the Dodge Dart being such a mass-market car that can appeal to some important demographics, it was import for representatives from those demographics to get a first-hand look at it.
And, of course, some of the more mainstream online auto media had a conniption with one or so of our guests, but that's okay. We all have a thick skin and besides, that's the beauty of social media: ANYONE with Internet access can freely publish their $0.02.
All in all, it was a great experience -- definitely for the Chrysler Group communications team, and we hope it was for those who drove the Dart in and around Austin this week.
If you're curious about some of the real-time feedback, see Twitter for the #DodgeDartDrive tag. Also check out #MoparChat and #Motorama.
Some of the early reviews are already up:
Subcompact Culture
Cheers and Gears
Victory & Reseda
Talk Nerdy to Me Lover
With the 2013 Dodge Dart slated to start rolling into dealer showrooms by mid year, the first drive reviews are getting out. So, if you're in the new car market, make sure you check out some of the reviews -- from different points of view.
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Chris Chrouch -- aka @MoparUnlimited, founder of the weekly Monday #MoparChat -- tweets from the side of the road while checking out the 2013 Dodge Dart in Austin, Texas, this week.
