Summary
In 2009 Ford is about to re-launch the Ford Fiesta into the U.S. market, after having pulling of the model from American market in 1981, due to a lack of success. To carry on this debut, Ford conceived a promotion strategy, called the Fiesta Movement, focused on putting the marketing campaign on the hands of the Fiesta drivers themselves. By choosing 100 candidates (called Agents), who would be able to drive Fiesta models and share their experiences, the goal of Ford is to empower the brand image into the younger generations by using social media on Internet. That initiative was received with skepticism by the senor board and the legal department of Ford Motor Company, who were worried about three main aspects: lack of control over the camping, measurability of its success, and potential negative outcomes that might affect the Ford image or that might arise legal issues.
Given that the campaign is already ongoing and that there some promising outcomes in terms of interest and attention obtained, the recommendations to continue promotion in the best effective way is to divide the campaign into three parts: continue with a reviewed version of the Agents-schema, reutilize some of the Movement cars to catch up with tests drives, and start a more conventional campaign (TV, specialized magazines, etc.), focused in showing the technical aspects of the Fiesta model.
To continue with the Movement, Ford should evaluate individual performance of each Agent and eliminate the Agents who performed worse on metrics accounting “interest generation” (number of visits, posts, comments, etc.), also Agents who deviates severely from Ford guidelines should be eliminated. The cars that have been used by those agents will be dedicated to drive tests. Finally, Ford will start an advertising campaign using Internet, TV and specialized press. This advertisements will be more focused on showing the technical features and characteristics of the Fiesta.
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