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

The Party Movement: How to create a “Conversation” between “Friends”

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

Ford needed to raise awareness about this product. His target market was millennials (ages 18-49). Millennials have 70 million driving, 77% have a social media view and 28% have a blog. A contest was devised to select 100 people who 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 entered the contest, which meant that many people in the target market got involved initially. Many of these people when they were targeted on Facebook and Twitter and talked about their experience. Many people blogged about it. This created a lot of initial awareness.

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

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

Campaign metrics show the success of the Fiesta campaign:

• 11 million impressions on social networks

• 5 million social media engagements (people sharing and receiving)

• 11,000 videos published

• 15,000 tweets… not including retweets.

• 13,000 images

• 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 do not currently drive a Ford

• 38% Gen Y awareness of the product, without spending a dollar on additional advertising.

• Conversely, Fusion doesn’t have that awareness after 2 years of being on the market even though Fusion received hundreds of millions of dollars in additional advertising.

• In the first year, 12,000 Fiestas were sold.