21 October 2009 - 13:34Ford has sent You a message on Facebook…

Ford Motor Company is going to launch a new, (yaaaaaaawn, goodness, pardon us) car in 2011.

But wait, there seems to be something different about this introduction. Ford is making a big bet on Social Media to launch its Fiesta.

In an effort called The Fiesta Movement, Ford gave 100 Fiestas to selected consumers 18 months before the car will be introduced. The participants are required to record their impressions and they are aggregated on popular social media sites. The results of the blogging, Facebooking, You Tubing, and Tweeting has been eye opening.

The awareness level of Fiesta, a car that is not even in the US yet is 37% among Gen Y.  That is about equal to the awareness level of Fusion or Flex, models that have received hundreds of millions of dollars in traditional media spend.

There’s nothing particularly earthshakingly original about The Fiesta Movement except that Ford is the one doing it. American car companies have introduced new models the exact same way for 50 years and none was more dogged in their ways that FMC. So CreativeFeed applauds this fresh thinking and wonders if there’s green shoots beginning to show in this American car company.

http://fiestamovement.com