Ford Gets Social Marketing Right  

Ford Motor Company is successful in using social marketing to promote their Ford Fiesta. In what Ford is calling their Fiesta movement, they gave 100 consumers a car for six months and asked them to complete a different mission every month. Some of the tasks consisted of delivering Meals on Wheels, taking Harry and David treats to the National Gaurd, and other creative tasks. Ford seeked out young adults who had established themselves a fan community online and were always looking for new stories to tell online.

Ford used these consumers to enter into the social media market, and it worked well. As the writer of this article states, "The digital space is an economy after all. People are creating, exchanging and capturing value, as they would in any marketplace." The so called agents that Ford gave their vehicles to documented their stories on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. Ford reported, "Fiesta got 6.5 million YouTube views and 50,000 requests for information about the car—virtually none from people who already had a Ford in the garage. Ford sold 10,000 units in the first six days of sales. The results came at a relatively small cost. The Fiesta Movement is reputed to have cost a small fraction of the typical national TV campaign."

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