The Fiesta Movement: A Case Study in Social Media Marketing. Introducing the Ford Fiesta

The Fiesta Movement: How to create a “Conversation” among “Friends”

Most people adopt brands that their friends recommend. To create strong brands an organization must have a conversation with their “friends” and “recommend” a product. Social media allows a marketer to develop a friendship with their customers and then have conversations in which brands are adopted. A classic case study for this is the recent social media campaign that Ford adopted to introduce its Fiesta, a European car, into the American market.

Ford needed to create awareness for this product. Their target market were the millennials (ages 18-49). Millenials have 70 million driving, 77% have a social networking sight and 28% have a blog. A contest was devised to select 100 people that would be given a Fiesta to drive for 6 months. The contest was the beginning of the “conversation”. Ford wanted to attract 100 people who were very active on Social Media platforms. Four thousand people took part in the contest which meant that a lot of people in the target market were engaged, initially. Many of these people when on their sights at Facebook and Twitter and talked about their experience. Many people blogged about it. This created great initial awareness.

Ford did use a little control so that the agents, as the winners of the contest, were called. They were asked to complete a “mission” month that would engage their target market on social media. Agents were chosen for their style of life. These were people who went places, met people, who then engaged many more friends through posts, blogs, photos, videos. These were people who had “conversations” with their “friends”. Ford discreetly recommended that their agents would take the car to certain events that would involve exposing the car to a great many people in the Fiesta target group. The agents did what Ford wanted them to do, they did what they would have done anyway. They posted and blogged about their experiences with the car. Ford now had a strong presence in the social media for their car.

The agents created a strong brand for the car. People don’t trust corporations, so trust for a brand is created through social media by allowing other people to create relationships (“friendships”) through the car. Ford reached out to those who are listening and let them do the talking for them, and to connect to people like themselves. These relationships created within their target market allowed Ford to market themselves as “real people” just like their “friends”. Ford was able to create a brand by creating a conversation with “friends”. Each “mission” was documented on YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter.

The metrics of the campaign show its success of the Fiesta campaign:

• 11million Social Networking impressions
• 5 million engagements on social networks (people sharing and receiving)
• 11,000 videos posted
• 15,000 tweets…not including retweets.
• 13,000 photos
• 50,000 hand raisers who have seen the product in person, and have said they want to learn more about the product
• 97% of those people don’t currently drive a Ford
• 38% of awareness by Gen Y about the product, without spending a dollar on additional advertising.
• In contrast, the Fusion doesn’t have that awareness after 2 years of being in the market inspite of the Fusion receiving hundred and millions of dollars in additional advertising.
• In the first year there were 12,000 Fiesta’s sold.