Ford Motors Fiesta: Swinging at the Piñata

As a kid, I recall a few birthday parties where we all got to take turns swinging at a brightly colored piñata, breathlessly anticipating when all the yummy candy and fun toy goodies would come exploding out.    Watching each person go after the piñata was half the fun.    Of course, as I got older, the piñata was traded for adult beverages and games that will go without mentioning here.  All in all, the best parties I’ve ever been to usually have two things:  interesting people and entertaining activities – Ford Motors with their “Ford Fiesta Movement” campaign looks like it could have both on hand. 

The Fiesta Movement began with the question: “What could we do with a 1,000 Fiestas?”  From that, an ambitious social test driving experiment was born.  Ford Motors invited social media mavens to apply to be one of 100 test drive “agents” who would commandeer their own foreign-made Fiesta for a six-month long real-life road test consisting of monthly “missions”.  The “agents” will lifestream their thoughts, activities and opinions across a wide spectrum of social media, including YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and Blogs.

Personally, I find this marketing experiment by Ford to be extremely encouraging for the following reasons:

Realizing Consumers are in the Driver’s Seat – Ford intends to trust consumers to share their honest thoughts and reviews about the product, even if they go in an unfavorable direction.  Scott Monty (@scottmonty), Ford's director-social media, said “it will require a new kind of corporate responsiveness and flexibility”, which tells me they are getting the true sense of “conversation” versus “broadcast messaging”.

Keeping an Eye on the Road – The focus of the social test drive is on how the car actually helps/enhances its driver and passengers in living their daily lives, rather than a battle of product comparisons or ratings.  The program is designed to keep us, the audience, looking outward and seeing the whole picture – Customer Story + Product Test = Insightful Brand Dialogue.”

Offering the Keys – My favorite aspect of the campaign is the invitational approach to the community.  While I don’t know how far and wide Ford and its agencies JWT and Undercurrent threw the casting net, but at least they opened up the application process for those who were willing to participate, instead hiring the usual high-paying celebrity suspects.

The Fiesta Movement is off to a promising start, however, there are a few key housekeeping items the Ford Team might consider if they want to ensure that the larger consumer audience can better discover and take a swing at their social piñata:

Search without the Blindfold – the power of social networks is becoming more and more visible, but one can’t ignore the inevitable pull of search to draw consumers into your experience.  From my initial observation, basics such as title tags, meta-descriptions, keywords and alt-tag descriptions are missing – these would contribute greatly to elevating and amplifying the Fiesta Movement within the driving category as well as other related cultural categories (currently it doesn’t rank first page on Google search for “Ford Fiesta”).  Also, there are some very well-known personalities participating in the Fiesta Movement, but their individual Fiesta Agent profiles also are MIA in search (e.g. Judson Laipply’s agent profile is not listed amongst Google results for his name).

Agent Profile Snapshots – while the photos and names of the agents are intriguing, having to click through each to discover who I want to watch and follow is cumbersome.  A quick profile summary rollover would be a terrific way to quickly scan the roster and jump into their story.  Also, fans have a zest for rooting for the hometown boy or girl – it would be great to be able to sort/locate by each agent’s base location by drop-down or interactive map.

Keep Missions Real – the “Mission” topics cover various cultural interests, but may be missing out on the humorous escapades of everyday living.  For example, when I first graduated college and was on the job hunt, I drove all over Northern Virginia going to interviews, temping at various locations, etc.  My commute constantly changed and with it my poor Volvo and I had to continually do battle with a new set of daily traffic foes.  Has anyone ever tried to parallel park in downtown D.C. at lunchtime?  Not fun.  Some clever driving missions such as “best lunchtime parallel parking” or “most creative vacation or apartment trunk packing job” would also lend a unique and entertaining twist (and really show what these cars are capable of in the concrete jungles of the USA).

Make the Audience Part of the Show – Ford Motors has great potential to draw customers who are curious about the new Fiesta by allowing them more ways to participate with the 100 agents.  It would be interesting if the audience was allowed to suggest and vote on a final mission towards the end of the program.  Better yet, invite fans of the Fiesta Movement to join a local MeetUp group, meet out for a TweetUp event with one or more of the agents and take their own, brief test drive of the Fiesta (I’m sure the local dealers would gladly supply refreshments :)

Ford has hung out a pretty enticing piñata - will be interesting to see what happens as the agent's take their test drive swings and eventually break it open for all of us to share what's inside.