Ford fiesta movement :

- In april 2009, the ford motor company launched a new marketing campaign called the FFM that
was unlike any other used by Ford since June 1903
- Using social media to build awareness and buzz for the 2011 north American ford fiesta
- It used a mix of social media and viral marketing techniques, and represented a departure from
the typical kind of marketing comm strategy used in the auto industry
- The campaign started in April 2009 and ended in novembre 2009 before the launch in December
2009
- Used an atypical timeline
- Ford enjoyed good publicity based on its use of non traditional marketing programmes due to
the apparent success of the FFM
- They ysed untested tools of viral marketing, but marketers and managers couldn’t have control
over the message to consumers, which was a scary prospect for any marketing executive
- FFM generated about 50 000 sales leads, how can they be converted into sales?

The car: ford fiesta:

- Ford’s most popular small car model in many countries around the world
- The first version was briefly sold in the US in late 70s
- For the rest of the model history, it stayed outside the US market, since that americans loved to
have a big car
- With new changes in customer’s preferences in the US, it was suggested that the brand could
find a market in the US
- In 2009, they announced the return with a model based on one launched in Germany
- Ford mark 6, aka fiesta was part of the one ford strategy that aimed to build a global product line
with a series of world cars that were the same around the world so that ford could take
advantage of the economies of scales around the world
- The fiesta was a global car manufactured in Germany, Mexico, spain, Thailand …

Launching a small car in the US automobile market:

- The average price per new car increased while the total number of new passengers cars sold
decreased
- Companies were selling fewer cars
- Ford had a difficult US launch on hands, as attracting new buyers during a tough economic time
was not a good condition to launch the car
- The launch required a non traditional approach
- Ford had also to convince americans to opt for a larger but affordable family sized sedan that a
small car can help them with their needs
- They were targeting the 14-29 age, since they make 20% of new car buyer market in the US
- They also wanted to stand out from competition

The FFM campaign:

Objectives:
 - Building awareness of and interest in the 2011 fiesta, and convincing people that sub compact
company cars were functional and stylish

Challenges:

- Building awareness for a car that wasn’t sold in the US for decades
- Convincing customers that Fiesta could be fun
- Demonstrating benefits in a fun way
- Reaching target audience through SM
- Doing all of this with a Low Cost campaign

General Approach:

- Reaching the target audience through social media

- Ford wanted to show them what this car could do, what customers like targets think about the
car
- Ford did a viral marketing campaign on a very large scale
- Viral marketing: marketing practice that emphasizes the use of consumers as agents for
generating and disseminating information about a company, brand, product or service at a basic
level
- Company sends free samples to special consumers called seeds, so that they have first hand
experience to pass on to their friends and family by word of mouth via social media tools, like FB
twitter and other
- A constraint of not being able to put a lot of customers into the car (free sample)

Basic components of the campaign:

- Consumers that were similar to them

- Gave a new fiesta to a small number of very carefully selected americans and let them drive for
free for 6 months
- 100 were selected
- Every one had to use social media and post about the fiesta
- The 100 were chosen because they were socially vibrant, unique and able to tell a good story,
and were present across different networks and had hundreds or thousands of friends on
facebook and twitter
- Posting regularly about the car on youtube, twitter, facebook and blog
- The idea was to share real things about the car
- Unedited experiences
- But this was a risk, as negative videos could destroy the chances of a successful launch
- Agents were given missions to complete each moth a new theme and misisons were assigned
- Missions that kept people engaged in their content featuring

Campaign performance:

- The FFM appeared to be successful in getting the hand picked agents to produce content and
post it on social media websites
- 50 000 wanted to have a fiesta, and 97% out of the 50k didn’t have a ford car
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