1. Analysis & Outlook
Social Media Marketing – Ford Fiesta: A Social Remix, Revival of 2009 Fiesta Movement
Ford Motor Company had redesigned the Fiesta car in 2009 with a target of reaching the young
customers and first time car buyersand company launched the Fiesta Movement, the campaign
that sparked chatter on social media, and user-generated content became the basis for the
company’s TV and print ads. Ford gave 100 digitally-connected people a Fiesta for six months
with one mission create a themed video every month, documenting their time with the car on
social media. Ford then put the content up in real-time, unedited and unfiltered, essentially
turning over the brand to its consumers. The Fiesta Movement that started in April 2009 "was
entirely driven by social media" without any traditional media set against it, and, Scott Monty,
Head Social Media, Ford Motors said by April 2010 the conversion rate from reservations to
orders was 10 times higher than this process for any other vehicle. Ford began accepting
reservations for Fiestas on Dec. 1, 2009. The Fiesta Movementdoes show sales figures resulting
from just social media efforts. Aside from the 7 million video impressions on YouTube, 750,000
photo impressions and more than 40 million Twitter impressions, Scott Monty says more than
130,000 consumers registered at FiestaMovement.com to receive more information about the
vehicle when it came on the market. About 82 % of those registered hadn't owned a Ford before.
And for the ultimate metric, conversions, Monty says 10 times more reservations become orders
than did so for any other Ford vehicle.
In February 2013, Ford announced a new social media campaign named Fiesta Movement: A
Social Remix that was a revival of 2009 Fiesta Movement.Like the 2009 original, which was
Ford’s first social media marketing endeavor, the new Social Remix campaign will revolve
around 100 people with large social audiences online, whom Ford is calling “agents.” Each will
be lent a 2014 Ford Fiesta for six months in exchange for a commitment to produce one video
about the car each month, and every video will have to conform to a new “mission” or theme
generated by Ford, but the automaker will not edit any video at all. These six themes are travel,
adventure, style and design, entertainment, technology, gaming, social activism (focused on local
causes) and healthy lifestyle. All the videos will be showcased at the campaign’s Fiesta
Movement website, and partnerships with prominent TV, entertainment and sports events —
including American Idol, the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival and the Summer X Games — will
generate “the elements that help amplify” what all of the participants produce. the videos will
form the basis for all 2014 Fiesta advertisements, including TV spots and print and online ads.
The 100 participants in the new campaign will include some celebrities and alumni of the 2009
program as well as people recruited by Ford for the first time. Ford is aggressively using the
social media platforms for promoting its brands and engaging with customers and this has proved
to be a huge success for the company since 2009 and Ford customers too have actively engaged
with the company on different social media platforms. This is very important as most of the
companies across the globe have social media presence but they fail to engage customers and
social network users increase their participation and ultimately drive revenues for the company
which only Ford Motors is doing successfully.