Fiesta campaign exceeded its expectations

[rickaren]

Ford says Fiesta campaign exceeded its expectations

Posted on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 1:22 PM EST. (Employee News)

Ford Motor Co.’s social media-driven Fiesta Movement campaign has exceeded the company’s expectations, the Dearborn automaker’s top marketing executive said Wednesday, the Detroit Free Press reported.

In April, Ford brought 100 Fiesta subcompact cars to the United States from Europe and put them into the hands of mostly young, hip drivers who had shown savvy with social-media networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, the paper said.

Ford allowed its so-called agents to use the cars for free for six months and encouraged them to write about their experiences online, the Free Press said. By October, the agents had generated content that had drawn more than 4.3 million video views on YouTube, more than 540,000 photo views on Flickr and more than 3 million Twitter impressions, the paper said.

Jim Farley, Ford’s group vice president of global marketing, said 60 percent of the public is now aware of the brand, even though the vehicle doesn’t go on sale until early next summer, the paper said. “To get 60 percent awareness in traditional media, it costs somewhere north of $50 million,” Farley told journalists. While he declined to say how much Ford spent on the Fiesta Movement campaign, Farley said it was a fraction of $50 million, the story said. (Detroit Free Press)