CorpComms Magazine

'Agent Brittani has hot chicks washing her car, but not the kind you think. These are bikini-clad, yellow-feathered chicks with oversized, yellow beaks. Check out Hot Chicks Washing Car, Brittani Taylor: www.youtube.com/v/meYYeIPX6eE .'

This solicitation may look like email spam, but it is actually part of a press release from Ford Motor Company showcasing the most watched videos from its Fiesta Movement campaign. Check out the video and you will find Ford agent Brittani Taylor and her friend dancing around in large chicken costumes as they vigorously soap a silver Ford Fiesta with blue spots.

This is the face of the Fiesta Movement campaign, Ford's latest social media drive to create a buzz about its new Fiesta model, scheduled for launch in America next year, using the blogs, tweets, Flickr and Facebook updates and YouTube videos of 100 twenty-somethings across the country.

Now in their fourth month, 100 testers, who were selected from more than 4,000 applicants, are driving Fiestas around for six months in return for keeping up warts-and-all accounts of their experiences on social networks.

The idea is to spread the word about the car online among the fastest-growing segment of the population - those who are under 30 years old that are tech savvy, live their lives on social networks and hopefully, unlike most of America's population, can be convinced of the benefits of driving smaller cars.

Brittani Taylor, the Los Angeles-based actress who made the hot chicks video, is the perfect example of this demographic. She claims to be YouTube obsessed and her friend Chris persuaded her to apply for the Fiesta Movement when they were filming a YouTube video together about Twitter, where she has more than 12,000 followers.

Her campaign videos have garnered a lot of attention on YouTube and she even held an online competition to chose a name for her Fiesta, now christened Juanita. 'When I'm driving it on the freeway, the Fiesta is pretty easy to spot as it has blue spots. People will post messages on YouTube and say Oh my God, I saw you eating a bagel in Juanita on the 405.'

The campaign, produced by Ford in conjunction with UnderCurrent, a digital think tank, seems to be creating the required online buzz. By mid-July, Ford reported that their agents had generated more than 2.2 million YouTube views, more than 312,000 Flickr views and more than two million Twitter impressions, with more than 13.4 million impressions in total.

Sam De La Garza, brand manager for the Fiesta at Ford, is very pleased - and relieved - by the reaction from the agents and of those they meet. 'Every day, there's a tweet from an agent along the lines of I was having dinner and when I left the restaurant, people were taking pictures of the Fiesta.'

Julie Atherton, worldwide director of digital at Hill & Knowlton, who is not involved in the campaign, is impressed by the amount of video and blog content generated by the agents so far. 'I don't know the performance metrics set up by Ford, but it certainly looks like it is creating a lot of awareness. It looks like a very energetic community,' she says.

Atherton also thinks that Fiestamovement.com, which aggregates campaign content, works well because it is not necessary to access different social media sites to view the testers' tweets, Flickr photos or Facebook entries. 'The site also profiles the lives of the testers, which gives the impression that Ford is supporting a whole community,' she adds.

Magnifying content

De La Garza says that Ford's managers are all in on the act, posting ideas and responding to agents on a variety of sites, including Twitter. 'We follow all their posts, comments and concerns, so if they do have any problems with the car, we can react very quickly. It also gives us a chance to analyse who we follow the most and why. The challenge is to really magnify the best content.'

Some of the better content is generated from missions - themed tasks assigned to agents each month - which they video and post to YouTube. In July, the theme was Style/Design, so agents Parris Harris, Sebastian St George and Sandy Wee took their Fiesta to fashion shows all over Los Angeles. 'America's next top model is The Fiesta http://bit.ly/1b1AG1 ,' tweeted Harris.

In August, the theme was social activism. Bryan Redeker, a design engineer and auto enthusiast based in Grand Haven in Michigan, held an event last month to try to raise enough cash to fill his Fiesta with pet supplies for local animal shelters. 'My wife and I came up with that idea ourselves and we've had it approved from Ford's mission control,' he says. 'I get to play with the car and we can also help out local charities.' Atherton says that the missions work well because they ensure the coverage doesn't get too boring. 'They provide a constant stream of exciting content. There would be nothing worse than if all the user generated content was along the lines of I drove to the shops today.'

Completing the monthly missions is the only requirement Ford makes of each agent, but many are constantly posting videos and updates about the car. For example, Ford recently organised for actor and presenter Mario Lopez to deliver sports equipment in a Fiesta to the Boys & Girls Club of America. Taylor went along and made a YouTube video about it. 'My outlook is, if I'm going to go to meet Mario Lopez, I'm going to bring a cameraman along,' she says. 'I wasn't required to do it but it was a really good opportunity.'

De La Garza says that, from the outset, Ford wanted the agents to experience new things. 'All the agents are super stars in social media, but hopefully the project is also providing opportunities for them,' he says. 'I think we've lived up to the excitement.'

Does freedom influence?

Yet the excitement is also hazardous. When the campaign was launched in April, the central criticism was that it might backfire if the cars got poor reviews. In fact, much of what the agents have posted has been positive, or at its worst, has documented minor mishaps. Redeker mistakenly ran over a bolt and shredded a rear tyre at the beginning of a long weekend away. (By the time he returned, Ford had fixed the car). A New York-based agent thought his car had been stolen, but it showed up in a police department pound.

Some argue the largely positive tone is an obvious result of the agents receiving a free car for six months and a high profile platform to showcase their skills and talents. As Bill Sledzig, associate professor of journalism and mass communication at Kent State University, wrote on his blog: 'As corporate marketing dollars come to dominate social media, how do we tell the difference between the real conversation and the sponsored buzz machine?'

De La Garza concedes that this was an issue at first. 'Some of the agents with the most established online followings were asked why they were posting about the Fiesta so much and if they were being paid,' he says. 'Some people found it hard to accept that they were excited about the car, so some agents posted long blog entries explaining why they were involved in the project.'

However, he thinks that people are generally enthusiastic about the car because they like it. At first glance, it is hard to see how what is often perceived in Britain as a runaround car, popular with grannies and students, can be marketed as the latest, hottest set of wheels to hit America.

'This isn't a stripped down, bare bones car like the old Fiesta. It's fully loaded but it's also economical and fun to drive.' says Redeker. He adds that people ask him whether his hot magenta coloured Fiesta is really a Ford, adding: 'In the US, we don't get the same quality of small cars that you get in Europe.' Taylor also thinks the Fiesta is surprisingly good. 'It's not dorky looking like some small cars, it's a very sporty looking car.'

The Fiesta Movement may be creating a buzz, but it is unclear whether that will translate into car sales when the Fiesta is finally launched. Ford believes that its target customers are more influenced by what their peers say on social networks rather than anything that appears in traditional media, including professional reviews.

Brittani Taylor is very confident about the power of her online presence and of the other people participating in the Fiesta Movement. 'We live and operate in an Internet-based society,' she says. 'Online is our world. This is what we do.' 

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