Mustang Blog - Ford Mustang News

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other such websites are seen as the future of online social interaction. After all, why engage in a prolonged, deep conversation when you can just hop on Twitter, type out a 140 character message. (That previous sentence was 123 characters). Okay, I'm showing my bias now, but anyway, the online social media phenomenon has not gone unnoticed by Ford, and they've launched the Fiesta Movement, a way to promote their new Fiesta model through these media. And it's working pretty well; over the course of the past three months, they've racked up 1.8 million views on YouTube, over 270,000 photo views on Flickr (one of those was me, finding the pictures below), and 1.8 million Twitter impressions.
One of the "Fiesta Movement Agents" from Seattle
The Fiesta Movement is made up of 100 people picked by Ford to drive the new Fiesta for 6 months. Over that time period, those people, whom Ford calls "Fiesta Agents," will post pictures, videos, Twitter posts, and blog posts about the car in order to drum up publicity. This may seem like a publicity stunt, but, when you think about it, it is one of the savviest advertising moves ever made by a car company.
The Fiesta being shown off at Laguardia Airport
A lot of car reviews from traditional publications and magazines come from a few days of driving a car. After that, the reporter writes up his/her impressions, then moves onto the next vehicle. But, when you have a constant stream of information over a six month period, a reader is better able to get a full grasp of what it would be like to live with this vehicle (hopefully once the experiment is done they'll do some sort of wrap up so you don't have to slog through hundreds upon hundreds of 140 character Twitter messages). This process will make the potential buyer much more informed about the long-term experiences with the Fiesta. Also, from Ford's point of view, it's dirt cheap. They don't go into specifics about the actual deal worked out between the "Agents" and the car maker, but one would assume that they provide the cars at little to no charge, and then the "Agents" post their thoughts through social media that is free of cost. On top of that, Ford will be gathering information about the car to tweak it to suit American tastes. We'll have to wait until the car's launch in 2010 to gauge exactly how well this campaign worked, but considering the low initial investment is, expect this kind of thing to happen again.