fiesta roll

When Ford Motor Company prepared the 2010 North American roll-out of the Fiesta, its initial marketing push was solely through social media. Ford supplied 100 people with a Fiesta to drive for six months. They were the right 100 people. They were digital influencers (bloggers, podcasters, YouTube celebrities, and automotive journalists) who produced tweets, videos, podcasts, posts, and articles relating to the Fiesta.

Fiesta interior

A single Web page was made aggregating all this data where folks could watch the test drive unfold in real time. Ford did not edit, script or delete any of the information. The YouTube videos got 7 million views. There were 40 million tweets that contained the campaign's name ("Fiesta Movement"). 130,000 people registered online to receive more information when the Fiesta went to dealers. 83 percent of those people had not owned a Ford. U.S. brand awareness went from practically zero to 58 percent! Talk about "buzz" creation.

All that "buzz" wasn't mere chatter. Ford converted 10 times more pre-launch purchase reservations into actual orders than it did for previous model rollouts. People got to witness people enjoying the benefits of the Fiesta.

I know this event is not new. I decided to create a post on it since "consumer-driven" brand information is so popular these days. In this case, the 100 people were practically responsible for creating the Fiesta brand. Certainly an excellent example to talk about when thinking of brand engagement.

Information for this post came from the January/February 2011 edition of CFO magazine.
CFO.com