Ford has recruited 100 "young, Web-savvy" consumers to drive its Fiesta subcompact for six months and then chatter about it online, in hopes that they'll serve as "opinion leaders" and "build a collective of digital storytellers" a full year before the car is available for sale.It's a big idea to start the sales conversation many moons before dealerships start twisting arms, but I fear that Ford has got the substance of it all wrong.
The gurus who make money selling these sort of campaigns see it as a way of pre-populating the web with reviews, a la the hotel reviews many travel sites provide. It's a fact that consumers value the opinions of their fellows, and often find the information more credible that that which is normally provided by brand marketers. One of Ford's reviewers shot a wacky video to qualify for the campaign (it was a contest, of sorts) that has been watched almost 300,000 times on YouTube.
Reaching 300,000 people for free is really cool, so the participants for the campaign were chosen by a combination of 1) how active they were online, and 2) how creative.This isn't really a conversation, though, is it? Since each reviewer has been schwagged with a car, gas, and insurance, it's not likely that many of them will aggressively slam the Fiesta. A vast majority of the posts will be "slice of life" stuff, so it may not necessarily tell anybody anything useful (or compelling).
Lots of it will be consciously creative, or at least aspire to be funnier or edgier than it turns out to be.In other words, Ford has outsourced its pre-launch advertising campaign to 1) people who aren't really capable of producing good advertising, and 2) a medium that demands that nothing get advertised.I get it. The goal is to get people to get other people to talk about the videos and blog posts, vs. necessarily talking about something as humdrum as a car.
This is one of those marvelously nonsense, self-referential arguments for social media: the most important dialogue must focus on whatever is least important to the business. You remember those commercials for Nissan's failed Sentra launch a while back, with the slacker guy living in his car? Multiply that by 100 people, few of whom will be anywhere near as funny or engaging as Nissan's faux blogger, and you'll have the brilliant insight behind Ford's Fiesta campaign.
I still don't quite get why otherwise smart marketers continue to confuse social conversation with distracting noise, however momentarily entertaining the cacophony might be.Imagine if Ford had elected to actually respect its Generation Whatever would-be customers, and constructed a way to actually talk to and with them prior to the product launch?
It could have been relevant to consumers, not as an entertainment vehicle (no pun intended), but focused on functional things that matter...fuel efficiency, durability, whatever. It would be a far greater creative challenge to come up with program(s) that made these qualities engaging and interactive, instead of opting for yucks and buzzBut with relevance comes potential utility, so the effort could have involved specific uses and applications for participation.
Maybe would-be consumers could sign-up to do things and somehow "earn" discounts on the ultimate purchase? Perhaps the campaign could have provided information, in some creative and compelling way, to get people to hold off from contemplated purchases until the Fiesta is availableBecause, ultimately, it's not the conversation that matters as much as the transactions during it, whether of the car, or add-ons, services, whathaveyou. Couldn't potential customers have been involved in helping design aspects of the offering -- music downloads, service deals, even novel pricing or financing models -- that they could then transact when available? It's just too damn easy to aspire to hipness, being cute, and coming across as current or topical.
The Detroit automakers have spent literally billions over the past few years alone trying every which way from Sunday to do it, and they've failed miserably.I fear that even if lots of people see the Fiesta posts, and are entertained more than once, it still won't get Ford any closer to selling cars.
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