With the launch of Ford's unique social media campaign promoting the upcoming release of the Ford Fiesta, the automotive giant has positioned their marketing in such a way as to offer significant advantages over any advertising initiatives lauched by their competitors.
See the article here for a summary of the campaign.
The major advantages of this campaign are:
By putting the promotion in the hands of the social media experts. Ford is able to access an alternate style of advertising/marketing not necessarily accessible through standard corporate channels. Through these alternate methods an entirely different market is opened up to Ford; moreover this market encompasses an age group which is going to soon be the primary demographic purchasing cars. consider the following statement from the social media news release:
"Chosen agents largely will resonate with Millennials, the next-generation consumer group born between 1979 and 1985. These consumers, which will total 70 million drivers by 2010, use social media daily and offer a prime opportunity for Ford to tap into a group that hasn’t yet established brand loyalty."
With the agents driving the Fiesta for up to 6 months, they will have the opportunity to deliver first hand recommendations to anyone they encounter in a face-to-face situation; therefore they can actually show-off the car as well as just promoting it through social media channels.
Arguably the biggest advatage of this campaign is that social media experts will generally be regarded by the public as more neutral in their opinion and therefore any recommendations will be taken at face value as oppose to being considered "paid advertising." Moreover, the SME's opinions are probably considered relatively reliable based purely on the number of people already following their blogs, tweets, videos and any other techniques they use.
For additional information on this campaign checkout the following blog posts:
Andrew's blog
Jackie's Blog
Megan's Blog
Mike's Blog
Johnny's Blog
