It is a social media movement which according to auto major Ford has created 11 million social networking impressions; five million engagements on social networks (people sharing and receiving); 11,000 videos ; 15,000 Tweets (not including re-tweets), 13,000 photos and over one million real-world miles by the 100 participants who drove the car.
Titled the “Fiesta Movement”, this was Ford’s Social Media expert Scott Monty’s inspirational idea , prior to launching Ford’s Fiesta model in the US market. The program began in 2008, 18 months before the cars were actually supposwatch?v=c2FMtig4QGIed to arrive in the US market. Ford gave 100 European Fiestas to people to drive and live with. The results of the blogging, Facebooking, Youtubing and Tweeting by those people, plus the echoing of those messages by the blogosphere, followers, etc. has now created a case study of sorts in social media marketing strategies.
So after 18 months of user generated content through a process of sampling, Ford is gearing up on strategising the Fiesta’s traditional media buying/ advertising spends in the US. A huge eye opener to how the consumer is slowly changing the barometers of marketing.
The Fiesta Movement will end in November, after which Ford will start to ramp up a pre-launch and then launch media campaign, which will include actual TV, print, outdoor, etc
Once again this definitely shows Ford to be among the MNcs who have understood the value of social media and have changed strategy to leverage it.
It’s also ironic, because even in countries like India, the Fiesta has been on road for ages and has done decently well in terms of sales. In India at least Ford went for a traditional ad campaign. But given the race for domination in the category of small cars, it would be great to see a strategy like this being implemented for the Indian market. Maybe for a car like the Reva, which is supposed to come out with brand new family version 4 seater eco-friendly car in 2010 or maybe a Maruti for their next model?
To get an idea of what Ford is exactly doing in the realm of social media, this link gives a fair idea.
The acid test however, would be to see how well Fiesta does in the US market after all this. If it cashes in, I guess we have a new fad, which other auto giants will also try to follow by tweaking it here and there.
But that has not deterred Ford from actually committing to spend 25 per-cent of their marketing spends on social media marketing initiatives for the next year. This is what , Ford’s chief marketing executive James Farley said speaking at J.D. Power’s Internet Marketing Roundtable in Las Vegas.
And the real clincher accroding to Farley: “If you are trying to communicate, as we are, that you have been reinventing the company , you can’t just say it. You have to get the people to say it to each other.”
Amen to that!
The all new Ford Fiesta
