Peugeot puts RCZ designer on Twitter

Like many automakers, Peugeot is now making conspicuous use of social media platforms as a component in its new car launch campaigns and in order to manage customer relations online. For its new RCZ coupe, Peugeot in the UK has been running a social media campaign under the strap line "It chooses you", with associated Twitter and Facebook accounts – which culminated with a member of the public winning an RCZ last week.

For auto designers, there was little interest in the campaign up until last week, when Peugeot put RCZ designer Boris Reinmöller behind a computer terminal and opened him up to a public Q+A session through its Twitter account.

During an hour and a half long session, Reinmöller was subject to questions that ranged from how he would spec his personal RCZ, to where he studied, and whether there was any musical inspiration behind the car's design. As one might expect from a public forum, precious little new insight was given away, yet the 'twitter-sphere' did discover that the chief designer thinks the car looks best in a combination of 'stealth' black and gray tones; that the RCZ was not clinic-ed in traditional fashion; and that the car was only given the go-ahead for production in March 2008.

The appearance by Reinmöller on Twitter illustrates the platform's growing importance for automakers. While many are still using it primarily for PR-led communications methods, Twitter's open, highly transparent nature lends itself to inclusive and authentic communications efforts – promoting conversation and debate – rather than bland, corporate hyperbole.

Getting the people behind the cars – particularly engineers and designers – onto Twitter and other social media platforms, is therefore a logical next step for the more engaged car companies. For instance, Ford has a 'one percent' goal to get one in every hundred of its employees – across all areas of the business – using social media and interacting with customers, while GM recently announced an even more ambitious plan to open up.

While many designers we speak to still recoil in horror at such suggestions, the more enlightened among them are asking how design teams can use such platforms to better understand customers. Ultimately, the question is whether use of these tools, and social media in general, can move from being primarily about PR to something that generates a competitive advantage – with designers able to get greater insight into the lives of those who live online – and to conduct better, more interactive forms of research.

The full transcript of the twitter conversation, and the questions posed to Reinmöller, can be found on Peugeot's RCZ Facebook fan page.

(Joe Simpson can be found roaming the twittersphere at @JoeSimpson – Ed.)

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By Joe Simpson