Ford Fiesta

The Ford Fiesta

Writing in the Wall Street Journal just ahead of the launch of the Ford Fiesta, Dan Neil rhapsodized about the car’s styling, the sweeping curves of the body panels, and the crazy, oversized quad headlamps. “Built like a Russian gymnast,” he declared. “In this segment, it’s hard to build anything that doesn’t look purely twee and adorable (Honda Fit or Chevy Aveo), so even a trace of malice, as the Fiesta has, amounts to car-styling genius.” He concluded, “If you’ve ever rented a small American-brand car overseas and thought “Why can’t we get this back in the States?”—well you can.”1

“Do Americans think that? I don’t think so,” said Chantel Lenard, group marketing manager for Global Small Car and Midsize Vehicles for the Ford Motor Company. “American brands are not even on the shopping list. The Ford name on a small car doesn’t help it one bit—in fact, it’s a liability. Ford is associated with F-150 trucks.” Lenard reflected on the fact that most of Ford’s customer base, and the traffic in its dealerships, were white, suburban family men. The target customers for the Fiesta would be very different. They would be much more ethnically diverse, they would include women and men, and they would tend to be city dwellers. And most significantly, they would be younger than Ford’s current market. The Fiesta would be targeted at people under 30, known to demographers as “millennials” because they had come of age after 2000. Marketing to millennials under the Ford name would be a challenge.

But Lenard’s team thought it had found a way to connect with its target: put the marketing campaign in the millennials’ hands. People in this demographic were heavy users of social media, and had more faith in what their friends said than what advertisers said. So why not find 100 millennials with large online followings, import 100 Fiestas from Europe (where they had been on the market for some time), and lend them the cars with an invitation to create and share content based on their adventures? The result could be called “The Fiesta Movement.” Not Ford’s Fiesta Movement, but a movement whose energy came from the Fiesta drivers themselves.

At the beginning of July 2009, two months after the start of the Movement and with less than a year to go before launch of the Fiesta, the team was evaluating the Movement’s progress. Was it on track or were mid-course corrections needed? Unquestionably, the campaign was popular with Web marketing pundits, who liked that it was enabling a social network to write a large part of the brand’s narrative. As one put it, the marketer was working with contemporary culture instead of against it.2 Inside Ford, however, there were reservations. Ford’s legal counsel said it was against every customary, prudent way of doing things. And Ford’s senior management was asking tough questions. Was the campaign team abdicating responsibility for the brand’s messaging? What if a car broke down and the driver turned negative on the brand? Was the Web buzz going to translate into sales when the car was launched? Some of the bloggers were not even car owners or potential car buyers. There had been more vehicle damage than expected, because some of the big-city bloggers had not driven for a while and their driving skills were rusty. Fortunately there had been no injuries, but there had been an unusual number of flat tires, dents, dings, and near misses. And some of the content had been racier than Ford found acceptable. The bloggers’ love of creative freedom, extending to profane language and bared flesh, taxed Ford’s sense of what was proper for a large corporation.

Chantel Lenard asked her team for advice on two topics—“Control and metrics.” She asked them, “What are we doing to control the messages and activities of the Movement, and is it enough, too little, or too much? What do we need to measure to decide whether it is performing?”

The Ford Motor Company in 2009

The Ford Motor Company, based in Dearborn, Michigan (a suburb of Detroit), was one of the world’s largest automotive manufacturers and distributors. Its brands included Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury. In 2009 the company held a 16.7% share of the U.S. automotive market, edged out only slightly by General Motors (17.6%) and Toyota (17.5%), and substantially ahead of Honda (10.2%), Nissan (9%), and Chrysler (8.7%).3 The remaining 20% of the U.S. car market was composed of smaller European and Japanese brands. Even though Ford was the most profitable of the U.S. automakers, and had posted positive numbers during the worldwide economic turbulence of 2008 and 2009,4 in the 10 years leading up to 2009, sales of Ford vehicles were down by over 50% (see Exhibit 1).

Ford was best known for its line of rugged trucks, such as the F-series, and Sport Utility Vehicles such as the Explorer, as well as for its classic sports car, the Mustang. The F-series had been the most popular vehicle in the U.S. for 23 years and Ford’s best-selling vehicle in the truck category for 33 years.5

Ford was also known as the only one of the American “big three” automakers that had not filed for bankruptcy or received government bailout money during the 2008 international economic downturn. The global economic crisis had hit the automotive sector hard, and both General Motors and Chrysler had received federal government funding to stave off creditors.

The B Segment

In the North American automotive industry, vehicles were categorized by their interior volume. Vehicles less than 85 cubic feet in volume were classified as A or micro cars; those with 85 to 99.9 cubic feet were called B or subcompact; those with 100 to 109.9 cubic feet were C or compact; and those with 110 to 119.9 cubic feet were CD (see Exhibit 2). The Ford Fiesta was a B segment car. The B segment accounted for 437,000 of the 8 million new passenger vehicles sold in 2008, and was forecast to grow to 713,000 by 2012.

In 2009, American cars in the B segment were priced just below $10,000 at the stripped-down, economy end of the scale and around $18,000 at the fully featured, high end of the scale. B segment cars tended to be bought either as entry-level vehicles by young people upon landing a first job, or by older buyers who prized fuel efficiency and compactness. About two-thirds of buyers were over age 40. (See Exhibit 3 for the full age distribution.)

The younger B segment demographic was known as millennials. In the U.S. this group had been growing fast, from 14% of the U.S. driving population in 2004 to 28% in 2010.6,7 They were culturally diverse at 19% Hispanic, 14% African American, 4% Asian, and 3% mixed race or other. The Caucasian proportion, at just under 60%, was the lowest it had ever been.8 Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, this group was known for its extreme facility with communications technology. Activities such as text messaging, tweeting, posting pictures, videos, and status updates on social media websites were not thought of as “using technology,” but rather as normal parts of life and socializing.

Competition in the B Segment

Toyota and Honda, Ford’s biggest competitors in the subcompact car space, had the advantage of never having left the B segment market, whereas the Fiesta, Ford’s best known subcompact, had been absent from this market in the U.S. since 1981. A subsequent Ford subcompact was the unpopular Aspire (1994–1997), immortalized as one of the world’s worst cars in a 2007 book of that name.9 While Ford focused on other vehicle classes, Toyota and Honda maintained strong presences in the subcompact market in the ‘80s, ‘90s and 2000s, and Nissan introduced a new B segment entrant in 2007 with its low-priced offering, the Versa. (See Exhibit 4 for recent sales figures in the B segment.) As a result, Ford was generally not in the consideration set of young buyers looking for small, economical vehicles.

The reputation of Japanese cars with consumers was largely positive at this time. Such cars were considered high quality, a good value, and environmentally friendly (see Exhibit 5). By contrast, many people associated American cars with a suburban, conservative lifestyle, and a lack of style. And then there was the taint of operational failure that had made the government bailout of the auto industry in 2009 a necessity. While Ford was not one of the companies that had participated in the program, the stigma of U.S. cars as a class suffered.

History of the Ford Fiesta

The Ford Fiesta had been designed for Europe in response to the 1973 oil crisis and the introduction of smaller, front-wheel-drive vehicles by competitors Fiat and Renault. The Fiesta was a big hit from its launch in 1976 and for the next 30 years, setting sales records and winning awards worldwide.

The exception to this global success was in the United States, where Ford sold Fiestas from 1978 to 1981 but then withdrew them, finding them too small and cramped for American consumers. The car’s place in the Ford U.S. line was taken by a larger Europe-designed car, the Escort, which was better suited to young professionals and those with small families. The American public took to the Escort with zeal. It was the top-selling U.S. car for most of the 1980s, buoying Ford to the position of the world’s most profitable auto maker.10

At the Frankfurt Motor Show in September 2007, Ford staged a dramatic unveiling of the Verve, its concept car that would eventually become the company’s new B segment car. A blogger for the auto review site Jalopnik wrote: “The Ford Verve Concept was designed for the generation that grew up with mobile phones . . . [it] introduces a completely new aesthetic—a new approach to the form and function of interacting with underlying technologies . . . Every button and switch was crafted with the kind of minute attention to detail that characterizes good mobile phone design.”11

Ford was optimistic that there would be an American market for the new Fiesta. Indeed, the new Fiesta would bear little resemblance to its “econobox” ancestor from the 1978–1981 era. At just over

160 inches (4 meters) in length, the Fiesta was, to be sure, a very small car. It would therefore have to make up with style what it lacked in size. The sprightly little vehicle would be made available in eye- catching colors and offer high-tech features such as keyless entry, seven shades of ambient lighting, and the Ford Sync in-car communications and entertainment system—extras traditionally associated with cars at higher price points.

In early 2008, Ford began to prepare the U.S. consumer to think differently about Ford with a campaign it called “Drive One.” A series of short 15-second spots was created that showed actual owners sharing a single, favorite aspect of a Ford. The spots were unscripted, with a guerilla-style documentary feel, and ran on websites, social media, and television. For example, a driver named Kristen said, “Everybody loves when they come in at night that I can change the color of the lighting.” David shared the joys of the car’s keyless entry, particularly, “If you’re wearing skinny jeans and don’t want a big clump of keys in your pocket,” while Marissa told viewers about the “Awesome little sensors” in the back of the car that help her swerve around things like trash cans when she’s backing up. “Thank you, car,” said Marissa in the ad.12

The Idea

The Ford advertising account in the United States was one of the industry’s largest, and, to service it, the global communications holding company WPP assembled a group known as Team Detroit from among its subsidiaries: three advertising agencies—JWT, Y&R and Ogilvy; the direct marketer Wunderman; and the media buyer Mindshare.

Lenard asked Connie Fontaine, manager of Brand Content and Alliances at Ford, to join her with Team Detroit as it brainstormed the Fiesta launch. Fontaine’s job at Ford was to identify partners and programs to give visibility to Ford in places other than car dealerships and test drive events. She had led a number of Ford’s more imaginative media partnerships including its sponsorship of the top- rated television show American Idol, and its “Warriors in Pink” initiative, which raised awareness and funds for breast cancer research.

Ford wanted a 9% share of unit sales in the B segment for Fiesta, yet Lenard and Fontaine agreed from the start that their target would be the 11% of B segment drivers in the millennial age group, reasoning that it would be easier to move up the age demographic curve than down. Yet millennials were notoriously difficult to engage. Fontaine felt that if the company was going to successfully speak to millennials, known for being quick to parody attempts to co-opt youth culture, then it had to go further than just partnering with youth-oriented movies, products, and celebrities.

The automotive industry had tried innovative marketing approaches with some conspicuous failures. Jim Farley, Ford’s group vice president of Global Marketing, recalled an episode of the Oprah Winfrey television show in which she gave a car to every member of her studio audience. “I was worried that we would do what Pontiac did with Oprah, where it would turn into a giveaway and we wouldn’t get anything out of it.”13 Another unsuccessful attempt at innovation had been Chevrolet’s 2006 invitation to the public to create ads for the Chevy Tahoe. In partnership with NBC television’s The Apprentice, viewers were invited to produce their own ads for the new Chevy Tahoe, using tools posted on the website. What happened next was not what execs at Chevrolet or their ad agency had in mind. Thousands of videos critical of the company began to circulate on the Internet almost immediately, implicating Chevrolet and its line of SUVs in everything from melting polar ice caps to the war in Iraq.

The germ of the idea that emerged from the deliberations of Team Detroit and Ford was: Ford would literally hand over cars, and figuratively hand over its brand, to 100 drivers, called Agents. In exchange for six months of all-expenses-paid use of a new Fiesta, the selected drivers would be asked to use social media to share their Fiesta experience with friends and followers. They would blog, tweet, post photos to Flickr, and make YouTube videos, all of which would move organically through their social networks. The idea was given the name Fiesta Movement.

As the team began to expand on the idea and sell it internally, they had to respond to doubts from skeptics. There were no models in showrooms, one pointed out. What was the point of promoting a car that could not be purchased for another year? Another noted, “Even if we could guarantee that the drivers will be wildly entertaining, it wouldn’t be enough to generate the impact Fiesta needs.” There was concern that Ford could not control what the drivers said about the cars and what they did with the cars. There was a string of “what ifs.” What if there was a serious accident, what if the cars were involved in criminal activities, what if the drivers failed to return them?14

In response, the team emphasized the magnitude of the task they faced. The launch could not rely on the coattails of the Ford brand, linked in buyers’ minds with F-150 trucks, Mustangs, wheat fields, and country singers, nor on Ford’s icon, the blue oval. It had to build new imagery, communicated with Agent-generated content, depicting people engaged in relevant, useful, and entertaining activities. The team wanted the Fiesta to become part of the national conversation about Ford for a new generation. The team needed to make the Fiesta brand, and with it the Ford brand, desirable and not merely defensible. They hoped to create a car that America wanted so badly that it would be launched with a waiting list, as had been the case with such launches as the Prius, the Smart Car, and the Audi R8, among others. And the team wanted the Fiesta launch to be a blueprint for a new process within the company that could carry over to its other product launches.

The idea behind the Movement was expanded into a creative brief (Exhibit 6), a set of criteria for recruiting Agents, an Agent training manual, and a set of Agent missions. With these documents in place, Ford management signed off and in September 2008, the Fiesta Movement became an official Ford initiative.

Designing the Movement

Recruiting Agents

The team formulated a list of the qualities they were looking for in the 100 Agents. The team wanted people who thrived on discovering new things and telling others about those new things, people who were viewed as fun, clever, and in the know, and people whose lives, both online and offline, were filled with adventure and variety. For this group, social media was integrated into their daily lives, not viewed as an obligation or afterthought. People in this group were natural storytellers, energetic and imaginative, and already knew how to create online content that attracted an audience. Other factors taken into consideration would be geographical distribution and cultural diversity that reflected the demographic. The idea of a vibrancy scale came up as shorthand for the attributes desired in Fiesta Movement drivers, and the team agreed that such a scale would be used as a tool for selecting drivers for the program.

Interested parties were asked to upload videos to YouTube containing their pitches. Connie Fontaine remarked: “I watched a lot of reality TV, so I knew these people were out there.” Her hunch proved to be reliable, when over 4100 video applications were received, representing all 50 states, and all walks of life. One entry, from a 23-year-old Asian-American male calling himself “Timothy de

la Ghetto,” offered a list of reasons why he should be chosen for the Fiesta Movement: his looks, his irresistible charm, his shamelessness, and his ability to operate a motor vehicle. He said in his pitch:

I’m here to tell the YouTube community and the universe that Asian people can actually drive,” he insisted. “And I’ve got like 65,000 subscribers, OK? I’m not like so big on YouTube, like [Internet celebrities] SxePhil or Tay Zonday. They can probably buy a new car with the money they make from a few videos. I’m in between. I’m not super YouTube celebrity status. I’m at 65 [thousand] haven’t broken 100, which means hey, I’m still broke enough to be down for this thing.15

Another entrant, Kristina, confessed to the camera:

Driving is a big part of my life. I’ve gone on tour and driven half way across the country and even though people tell me I’m crazy for doing these things I just love it . . . but my history of cars is a long list of grandma cars. I need something fun. I’m not the type of girl that belongs in a grandma car!16

Not only singles applied to be Agents. There were pairs of friends, and husband-and-wife teams, some with children, some without, and some expecting. The applicants were writers, realtors, construction workers, graphic designers, students, actors, engineers, artists, and accountants.

Using the vibrancy scale, this group was whittled down to 100, and their names were announced at the New York Auto Show in April 2009. The list included one Internet culture celebrity, Judson Laipply, whose video “The Evolution of Dance” was among YouTube’s all-time most viewed videos, and a small number of bloggers with followings in the millions, but the majority counted their audience in the thousands, and some had not yet built any significant audience. (See Exhibit 7 for breakdown of Agent demographics.) Each month a central dispatch office known as Mission Control would issue theme-based missions for completion. The Agents agreed to produce one video per mission and were encouraged, though it was not part of their contractual obligation, to tweet, post status updates, photos, and blog entries. The content was posted online on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and blogs, as well as on Ford’s official microsite at fiestamovement.com (see Exhibit 8). Although Agents were selected for their strong social networks, Ford publicists from each region of the U.S. were made available to them, at no cost, if they wanted additional guidance or assistance getting coverage for their stories.

As the Fiesta Agents prepared to hit the road, Ford organized test drives of the new car throughout the U.S., at locations ranging from college campuses to concerts to events such as the “Taste of Chicago” festival. Fontaine’s goal was to hit 100 cities and offer 100,000 test drives.17 In gauging the success of the events, the number of test drives taken was just one component of the program. Also of interest to Ford were the “walkarounds” (people who took a closer look at the car) and those who signed up for an email mailing list who, if interested would later become “handraisers” and join a waiting list for the new Fiesta.

Sending Agents Out on Missions

Within Ford and Team Detroit, those selected were thought of as amplification agents, using their talents and social networks to create interest and excitement for the brand that would proliferate as postings were viewed and shared.

Mission Control handled the logistics for the Fiesta Movement. Its job was to be the central point of contact for 100 drivers spread across the country. Mission Control dispatched the monthly

missions the Agents were to complete, and also provided 24/7 assistance to the Agents. Any questions Agents had that related to the Fiesta Movement were to go through Mission Control, as were reports and approvals for incidents such as repairs. A special Mission Control emergency number was provided in the event of an accident or injury.

For each month of the movement, from May to October 2009, there would be a theme. The May theme was Travel and the June theme was Technology. Within each theme, Team Detroit created missions, posted on Mission Control’s website. (See Exhibit 9 for missions associated with the Travel theme.) Agents chose one mission to tackle, and once a mission was selected by an Agent, it was removed from the list and was not available to others. Agents were therefore encouraged to check the list regularly. They were also encouraged to select and complete missions quickly, since once they had done so they would be able to view missions for the next theme.

As resources for the missions, Ford enlisted the cooperation of what it called Partners, such as MIT, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, Legoland, UCLA Medical Laboratories, NASA, the Sirius satellite music service, Bluetooth, Segway, the makers of the Rock Band video game, the iRobot home cleaning robots, and the Pandora music streaming service.

Before and during the execution of a mission, Agents were encouraged to use their social networks to alert their followers that a video would be coming. Once they had shot and edited the video, they sent it to a private network for approval by Ford. Once approved, Ford posted the videos to a central site, Fiestamovement.com (Exhibit 8), and Agents were also free to post them to their personal blogs or websites. Visitors to Fiestamovement.com were encouraged to sign up for test drives and to learn more about the Fiesta. (Exhibit 10 depicts the process.)

For a mission entitled “Twitter Taxi,” Agents Whit Scott and Thomas Knoll used their Fiesta and their Twitter accounts to see who needed a ride in their hometown of San Francisco. They sent out a tweet letting people know that their free ride service was in effect, and within minutes received tweets in response, with location information for the pick-up. Cameras rolled throughout. Not being professional cab drivers, they didn’t always know the quickest route. “We cost less, but you can tell,”18 remarked Knoll in the video. Among the fares Scott and Knoll picked up was Julien, who had recently moved to California from France. The Agents seized the opportunity of having a person from France in their car and asked—and discovered—where the best croissants in the Bay Area could be found. As people spoke to each other in the Fiesta, their Twitter handles, or names, appeared on screen.

For their first mission, Fiesta Agents Emma and Brad were challenged to be “mules for a day,” and deliver items using their new car. They connected with the gourmet food gift company Harry and David, where the executive vice president of Corporate Relations informed the Agents on camera, “we make, grow or bake 90% of what we sell in the catalog.”19 In the next scene, Emma and Brad appeared in hairnets, white coats, and latex gloves, working in the Harry and David assembly line. For their mission they assembled gift boxes for families of soldiers deployed overseas. They then loaded up their Fiesta with as many crates as it could accommodate and delivered the goods to the National Guard, where the gift boxes would be forwarded to the families of servicemen and women. Other Agents seized upon the expressive opportunities of the Movement. For the “Style & Design” mission, one enlisted the services of a Portland, Maine artist and had the Fiesta ‘wrapped’ in a custom lime-green and yellow geometric paint job. Another went one better and designed her wedding dress and accessories to match her lime-green Fiesta. Another’s enthusiasm for the campaign took the form of a tattoo.

Measures of Investment and Results

At the beginning of July 2009, two months after the Agents began blogging, Lenard’s team estimated that it had invested about $2 million in cars and infrastructure, and was spending about $500,000 per month to maintain the program. This investment was substantially less than had been spent on the “Drive One” campaign that had run for three months in early 2008, but substantially more than had ever been spent on a car not yet for sale. The team looked at early measures of the campaign’s effectiveness.

The Movement’s main objective had been to build familiarity with the Fiesta nameplate. They set the benchmark at 23%, the proportion of people intending to buy a car in the B segment who reported being familiar with the Nissan Cube one quarter before it was launched in June 2010. The Fiesta beat the benchmark comfortably, scoring 42%. A year or more after launch, B segment cars typically scored on familiarity in the range of 65% to 75%.

The benchmark for monthly visits to the Fiesta website was set at 144,000, the number achieved by the Ford Flex (a crossover or SUV-style vehicle) in the quarter just before its launch in mid-2008. In May and June 2009, the Fiesta website recorded 289,000 unique visitors for the two months combined, of whom 19% completed an exercise in which they configured the options on a Fiesta to reflect their preferences, and 14% gave their email addresses to get updates.

Test drives, normally a measure of the effectiveness of a marketing campaign, were limited by the small number of vehicles configured to meet U.S. driving requirements and available to be test- driven. In May, Ford had displayed this limited stock of cars in public places and had recorded 6,000 test drives (1,000 provided by Agents) and 30,000 walk-arounds. The demographic profile of the drivers was 65% male, 55% under age 34, and 81% non-Ford owners.

The team also gathered campaign input measures, chief among them the number of pieces of original content generated by Agents. Videos posted on YouTube and FiestaMovement.com were the most important form of original content. Ford’s goal had been 600 videos for the six months of the program, yet two months into the program the Agents had already posted 655. Each of the videos had been viewed about 1,600 times, on average. The most popular video had been viewed 200,000 times, while many had about 100 views. The Agents had blogged 632 times about the Fiesta, posted 5,535 photographs to their blogs and Flickr, and tweeted 7,787 times. Each photograph was seen 108 times, and the average Tweet went out to 400 followers.

In press mentions of B segment cars during May and June, Fiesta led with a 33% share of voice, ahead of the Honda Fit at 28%, the Toyota Yaris at 24% and the Nissan Versa at 15%. At 92% favorable or neutral, the sentiment of these mentions was more positive than for competitors.

Conclusion

Early results of the campaign seemed promising. Press coverage had been extensive, familiarity with the nameplate was high, and traffic was coming to the website, though a smaller fraction was registering on the site than normal. It concerned some of the team that none of the hundreds of pieces of video had truly gone viral. Perhaps, they thought, Ford could help the viral process along by giving advertising and press relations support to the best pieces of user-generated content. Others argued that the goal was not virality, but to show the brand repeatedly on the network of each Agent—their Facebook friends, their Twitter followers, their Flickr contacts, and their YouTube subscribers. Lenard contended that it would be difficult to integrate mainstream media into the

campaign. No budget had been requested for advertising because it was against Ford practice to advertise before there was inventory to sell. And while individual Agents had been assigned publicists, Ford was reluctant to play favorites among the Agents and support one piece of content over another.

And yet team members were reluctant to give up on expanding the reach of the campaign. Could Ford lend its clout to recruit celebrities and put them at the disposal of the bloggers, borrowing consumer interest in celebrity culture to draw attention to the car? Should some kinds of assignments be favored over others to expand reach?

The team also wondered: Should Ford eliminate Agents who had failed to generate a significant following? And with test drives running below target, should some agent cars be converted for test drives? Traditionally, test drives had a high correlation with purchase interest. Would test drives be a more effective use of the vehicle resources than the Movement?

Some of the Agents had balked at Ford’s list of missions, and were beginning to propose their own ideas. One had volunteered to drive across the United States at Ford’s expense. Another was particularly passionate about a social agenda and proposed a mission to publicize the cause. What leeway should Ford allow its Agents to follow their own direction?

Concern lingered as to whether the Fiesta Agents’ content was changing people’s opinion about Ford. While interesting, their content was not always about the car. Should it be more focused on specific features of the vehicle? Should Agents be asked to describe or demonstrate the vehicles advantages? Or should Ford just stay the course? If Ford tried too hard to shape the efforts of its Agents, it would surely dilute the feeling of authenticity that permeated the Movement. And yet no one on the team could be sure that the first two months of positive trends in impressions and familiarity would translate into purchase. The ultimate measure of success, everyone knew, would be Fiesta sales.