Social Media Marketing – Ford Fiesta: A Social Remix, Revival of 2009 Fiesta Movement

Ford Motor Company had redesigned the Fiesta car in 2009 with a target of reaching the young customers and first time car buyers and company launched the Fiesta Movement, the campaign that sparked chatter on social media, and user-generated content became the basis for the company’s TV and print ads. Ford gave 100 digitally-connected people a Fiesta for six months with one mission create a themed video every month, documenting their time with the car on social media. Ford then put the content up in real-time, unedited and unfiltered, essentially turning over the brand to its consumers. The Fiesta Movement that started in April 2009 "was entirely driven by social media" without any traditional media set against it, and, Scott Monty, Head Social Media, Ford Motors  said by April 2010 the conversion rate from reservations to orders was 10 times higher than this process for any other vehicle. Ford began accepting reservations for Fiestas on Dec. 1, 2009. The Fiesta Movement does show sales figures resulting from just social media efforts. Aside from the 7 million video impressions on YouTube, 750,000 photo impressions and more than 40 million Twitter impressions, Scott Monty says more than 130,000 consumers registered at FiestaMovement.com to receive more information about the vehicle when it came on the market. About 82 % of those registered hadn't owned a Ford before. And for the ultimate metric, conversions, Monty says 10 times more reservations become orders than did so for any other Ford vehicle.

In February 2013, Ford announced a new social media campaign named Fiesta Movement: A Social Remix that was a revival of 2009 Fiesta Movement. Like the 2009 original, which was Ford’s first social media marketing endeavor, the new Social Remix campaign will revolve around 100 people with large social audiences online, whom Ford is calling “agents.” Each will be lent a 2014 Ford Fiesta for six months in exchange for a commitment to produce one video about the car each month, and every video will have to conform to a new “mission” or theme generated by Ford, but the automaker will not edit any video at all. These six themes are travel, adventure, style and design, entertainment, technology, gaming, social activism (focused on local causes) and healthy lifestyle. All the videos will be showcased at the campaign’s Fiesta Movement website, and partnerships with prominent TV, entertainment and sports events — including American Idol, the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival and the Summer X Games — will generate “the elements that help amplify” what all of the participants produce. the videos will form the basis for all 2014 Fiesta advertisements, including TV spots and print and online ads. The 100 participants in the new campaign will include some celebrities and alumni of the 2009 program as well as people recruited by Ford for the first time. Ford is aggressively using the social media platforms for promoting its brands and engaging with customers and this has proved to be a huge success for the company since 2009 and Ford customers too have actively engaged with the company on different social media platforms. This is very important as most of the companies across the globe have social media presence but they fail to engage customers and social network users increase their participation and ultimately drive revenues for the company which only Ford Motors is doing successfully.