Davis ThinkingIn its August issue, Vanity Fair charges Microsoft with losing its mojo, pinning much of the blame on CEO Steve Ballmer. While the article makes some useful and valid observations, it never completes the circle, relating them back fully to the larger, underlying issue that ails brand Microsoft: the company has strayed far from the management and proper deployment of its founding vision.
Yesterday’s New York Times featured an interesting look at the “divergent paths” of the iconic Swedish auto brands Saab and Volvo. Both were orphaned by their parent companies, GM and Ford respectively, during the global economic downturn.
New mobile applications from automakers GM, Mercedes, Ford and BMW advance the concept of branded utility in profound ways. Recent apps from these brands blur the lines between branded utilities and pure product features. And there are important implications in the auto industry and beyond.
As debate over the Detroit bailout rages on, we look back at the Big Three’s record of foresight and innovation: The 80s. A rejection of the free-spirited 70s and celebration of conspicuous consumption epitomized by the "Greed is Good" mantra of Wall Street's Gordon Gekko. Ford Motor Co’s Mercury Cougar is ahead of the zeitgeist in this '78 spot for the XR-7.
Recently Car and Driver posted an April Fools Day blog entry claiming Ford was bringing back the Escort – and I bought it hook line and sinker. Why did I fall for the gag? Because an increasingly out-of-touch and all-too desperate Detroit has been so enamored with its familiar formula of nostalgic branding that the absurdity of an Escort reintroduction didn’t seem outside the realm of possibility.
What's striking about Fast Company's 2013 list of the world's 50 most innovative companies is the relative absence of large, established firms. Instead the list is dominated by the big technology winners of the past 20 years that have built innovation into their DNA, and a lot of smaller, newer start-ups. So why doesn't innovation thrive in mature organizations?
After years of ignoring it (accompanied by attendant crappy sales), Ford’s Lincoln luxury brand is reintroducing itself under a new name, the Lincoln Motor Company.
Ford has created an app that unlocks all of your internet passwords when your mobile device is close to your computer and locks them when you move away.
Every day, more and more brands are creating compelling, original content, and the medium of choice for these initiatives is Web video. The latest example is Ford Motor Company’s collaboration with eco-focused media company SHFT.com, “The Big SHFT: 10 Innovators Changing Our World”, a documentary series profiling industry professionals who are trying to transform their industries with eco-friendly sustainability solutions.
In an era when entire companies and long-time brands are disappearing, why do Americans trust certain brands and not others? What is trust?
Auto makers are deeply concerned that Millennials don’t care about vehicles nearly as much as they do about the next iPhone. So the companies have become decidedly more intent on roping in these car-reluctant twenty-somethings. That’s one big reason why, for instance, Ford has decided to set up shop, literally, in Silicon Valley, and why General Motors has turned for marketing advice to MTV.
Facebook brand timelines went live this morning, and though we've known about these for a while, some of the executions are pretty impressive, including founding documents, early advertising, memos, news clips and photos. It's as if dozens of little corporate museums just launched on Facebook.
It’s not easy being the Ford Motor of the Internet. And that, in short, is the predicament facing AOL, according to its chief executive, Timothy M. Armstrong, who spoke Tuesday as part of the three-day UBS media conference in New York.
Brand advertising seems to be on its way out. Take Starbucks, which used to advertise its coffee shops. And very effectively, too. Today, the brand is strongly positioned at the top of the coffee-shop market. What's next for Starbucks? The company's recent decision to drop the words "Starbucks coffee" from its logotype seems to indicate where the company is going. According to media reports, Starbucks is in the midst of a transformation from a coffee company to a food and beverage organization
Ford's corporate citizenship effort, The People's Fleet, is returning to Los Angeles this summer. Launched in LA last September, Ford will once again provide non-profit organizations (apply online here, or ping the organizers on Twitter) with their own 2012 Ford Focus for three months.
For years, Toyota has been the darling of the green business world. The hybrid Prius was a legitimate business home run (2 million sold), and it helped both differentiate Toyota's brand as the market innovator and propel Toyota to unprecedented profits. But now the company faces renewed competition for the title of green auto leader.
Employees at the Silicon Valley design firm IDEO LLC spotted weaknesses in the current crop of electronic-book readers. So they did what came naturally to them and designed their own.
Car companies have long tapped high-profile celebrities to spread word of mouth about new cars by test driving them around town. Now they are turning to a similarly powerful but cheaper source: young social-media influencers who have strong online followings.
First it was bye-bye, Oldsmobile. Then General Motors deep-sixed the Saturn, Saab, Pontiac and Hummer brands as part of its cataclysmic government bailout last year. And now, GM is kicking one more old friend to the curb: Mr. Goodwrench.
Look inside the 2011 Ford Fiesta and you will see dashboard controls that have been modeled after the keypad of a cellphone. In some ways, that makes perfect sense: Ford’s market research suggested that young buyers were more attached to their mobile phones than to their means of mobility. But by the time the new Fiesta arrived in American showrooms this summer, the phone that Ford had chosen as its model looked old-fashioned alongside the latest Apple iPhones and Motorola Droids — and so did the dashboard controls.
Ford and Web radio station Pandora are partners in a new cause-marketing push featuring artists John Legend and Jewel. The fourth-quarter campaign allows Pandora visitors to use the platform's social share feature to share a "mixtape" from playlists compiled by either artist. When a song is shared, Ford and Pandora will make a donation to the artist's charity of choice. Ford signed Pandora to its Sync platform earlier this year.
Scott Monty is the global digital communications chief for the Ford Motor Company, and full disclosure, a force to be reckoned with in The Influence Project. He currently ranks at number 43. He likes to say that Ford subscribes to a combination Woody Allen/Yogi Berra theory for social media where 90% may be just showing up, but what's critical is what you do when you get there. Monty talked to Fast Company about Ford's strategy for combining online and traditional advertising, breaking out of comfort cliques to expand a customer base, and the trials and opportunities presented by living in a 140 character society.
Scott Monty is the global digital communications chief for the Ford Motor Company, and full disclosure, a force to be reckoned with in The Influence Project. He currently ranks at number 43. He likes to say that Ford subscribes to a combination Woody Allen/Yogi Berra theory for social media where 90% may be just showing up, but what's critical is what you do when you get there. Monty talked to Fast Company about Ford's strategy for combining online and traditional advertising, breaking out of comfort cliques to expand a customer base, and the trials and opportunities presented by living in a 140 character society.
Facebook Inc. is trying to rev up its advertising business with a little help from your friends. The social-networking site is aggressively pitching to big advertisers like Ford Motor Co. and PepsiCo Inc. the latest in a series of ad formats that tell users which of their Facebook friends have expressed interest in the brand or product featured in the ad. The so-called social-context ads, which Facebook started rolling out over a year ago, are based on data it collects on the likes and friends of its users.
It's not exactly about cars, but Ford Motor's latest Sustainability Report might matter to people who are rethinking not just the products they use but the companies that make them, perhaps more so now in light of the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico.
Like many car brands, the once ultra-cool Jaguar has declined over the past several years, losing its luster and once-hallowed reputation for reliability. But now that the brand has been sold by Ford to India's Tata Motors, Jaguar is on the upswing, at least in terms of its promotional visibility. Jaguar announced two high-profile partnerships, one in the U.S. and one in the U.K., that signals a comeback of sorts.
We blog a lot about Ford around here, mostly because they’ve done a stellar job of integrating social media both into their marketing campaigns and into their vehicles. But as of today, there’s a new sheriff in town: Chevrolet. With the Volt, Chevrolet’s new electric vehicle, the company is rolling out an excellent integration with the Android OS and OnStar that will allow for voice-activated features and mobile-to-car communication.
In the world of automotive quality, consumer perception may lag reality, sometimes by years, but it also trumps reality when it comes to determining things like resale value. Ford's resale value is up, and the latest Automotive Lease Guide (ALG) study of consumer attitude suggests public opinion is driving the change. Jim Farley, Ford's head of marketing, was on the horn this morning to talk about how Ford now tops the industry in how much it has improved in ALG's Automotive Consumer Attitude Survey. The study measures a brand's Perceived Quality Score (PQS) relative to the industry. Ford and Ford trucks are in first and third place, with Kia in the middle and Hyundai at number four.
For big companies, bounding back from corporate scandal, financial malfeasance or public disaster is difficult--but it isn't impossible. Looking at companies that have come back after business downturns, product problems or corporate scandal, several experts on corporate reputation and crisis management helped Forbes identify 10 companies that have made, or are making, turnarounds after corporate hard times.
How much more frank is the language used in everyday advertising getting? Look, or listen, no further than a print, online and radio campaign for that most prosaic of products, Frank’s RedHot sauce. The theme of the campaign is “I put that ——— on everything.” In print and online ads, the missing word is covered with a splat that makes it look as if a censor spilled some sauce on the page. In the radio commercials, a loud bleeping sound is heard over the word.
In-car apps have been a bit of a buzzword for some time, but Ford is in pedal-to-the-metal mode since launching its Sync technology last month. The system allows for all sorts of four-wheel fun and japes, including voice control. The next step: cloud-based apps. Six teams of students from the "Cloud Computing in the Commute" program at the University of Michigan have each developed an app as part of a contest run by Ford's Research and Advanced Engineering program.
It has become standard practice for big brands and businesses to setup shop on Twitter and Facebook and use the social mediums to connect with customers. That’s all yesterday’s news now. But the early adopter brands who paved the way for the rest to follow suit have become the success stories that the media, the public and the web companies in the limelight turn to first.
The concept of visualization as a medium is great, but how far can information graphics be pushed until it falls off the cliff? The Fusion 41 Competition [fusion41.com] is a recent example of the world of advertising focusing on the visual attraction of data visualization. The competition "amassed a wealth of raw data generated from all of the teams and activities", which were then "brought to life" in poster-size infographics.
The next generation of Ford's Sync technology will turn its cars into rolling, talking, socially networked, cloud-connected supermachines. Introducing America's most surprising consumer-electronics company.
China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. agreed to buy Volvo cars from Ford Motor Co. on Sunday for $1.8 billion, a landmark agreement designed to vault the Chinese company onto the global automotive stage. The Volvo deal—which comes after China surpassed the U.S. last year as the biggest auto market—puts a Chinese company for the first time in charge of a major global car brand.
The Apple iPad, hitting stores April 3, is one of the most-hyped products in technology history. There is talk that it could revolutionize computing and media. But when it comes to new products, great expectations can doom products that don't measure up to them.
What do Ford Mustang, True Religion jeans, Xbox 360 and Coke have in common? Kids are curious about these brands, and are going online to ask questions about them en masse on social media platforms catering to youthful queries.
Last year in one of the longest advertising stalemates in TV's up-front history, broadcast company Univision sold all its inventory before any other network. The reason, Univision's president of advertising and sales David Lawenda says, is that some marketers are finally cluing in to the importance of marketing to Hispanics.
Ford Motor Co. surpassed General Motors Co. in sales last month for the first time in at least 50 years, presenting a new headache for the government-owned car maker as it struggles to return to profitability. Hours after the sales results were disclosed Tuesday, GM announced an overhaul of its top managers—the second executive shuffle in three months. The news underscored the impatience of GM Chief Executive Edward E. Whitacre Jr. and the heat the company is feeling from a resurgent Ford.
Ford has tapped 40 people to participate in the second phase of its Fiesta Movement campaign, a social-media effort begun last year to drive awareness of the U.S. version of the Ford Fiesta compact car, which goes on sale this summer. While the first program had participants blogging about their experiences with the car for a series of assignments from Ford Motor, the second program -- involving 20 teams of two agents each -- will have participants developing local-market activity around the car.
General Motors has blamed a supplier partly owned by Toyota for a faulty car part that led to the recall of 1.3m Chevrolet and Pontiac cars in North America. Bob Lutz, GM’s vice-chairman, on Tuesday told the BBC in Geneva that the supplier – separately identified as JTEKT, a joint venture between Toyoda Machine Works and Koyo Seiko – had not met “all requirements for reliability and durability”. His criticism came as Toyota, its reputation battered after recalls affecting more than 8m cars and trucks, sought to reassure US lawmakers at the third congressional hearing in the past 10 days into the safety and reliability of its vehicles.
It's a risky strategy at best because it can result in millions of dollars worth of free publicity or it can backfire. Frankly, the new Reebok ad, doesn't seem interesting enough to have much, umm, staying power. Brands including Budweiser, Ford, Levi's and Mastercard have been accused of producing their own sub-viral ad campaigns and unleashing their PR firms to spread the word about them. Sometimes, the ads are carefully shot to look like they were done by amateurs, sometimes they are painstakingly made to look like the company's real ads.
I’ve always had an easy time making decisions. I have this philosophy that “any decision is always better than no decision.” In fact, laboring over a decision makes me feel unsettled. I usually gather as much of the facts as possible, but I have to admit I have a pretty trustful gut and often that is all I need. We all have instinct. The decision we have to make is whether to use it or not.
Johnny Mercer, in my opinion, was the best lyricist of the 20th century, but I'm sure those words on a piece of paper, even repeated millions of times, would not have made "Moon River" famous. It was the music that made the words "Moon River" famous. Advertising needs visuals in the same way that lyrics need music, if you want to drive your words into the minds of your prospects. Without a visual hammer, an advertising campaign is almost certain to fail.
With all the talk about social networks and engagement, when it comes to getting things done, we rely on search. The image above was part of the set I used last Fall at the Inbound Marketing Summit when we talked about the importance of creating content for sharing. There was another interesting study I did not mention at the time that confirms a few of the following statements on social media as content delivery mechanism to:
Toyota said Friday that its recall of eight models in Europe could include up to 1.8 million cars, pushing the total number of vehicles affected by problems with floor mats or gas pedals to more than 9 million worldwide. That is nearly as many vehicles as was sold by all automakers in the United States in 2009.
The Ford Motor Company earned $2.7 billion in 2009 and said Thursday that it now expected to be profitable in 2010 as well. The profit for 2009, equal to 86 cents a share, was a swing of $17.5 billion from 2008, when the company lost $14.8 billion. It is Ford’s first full-year profit since 2005. The company ended 2009 with $25.5 billion in cash reserves, nearly twice the $13.4 billion it had at the start of the year. It also expects an operating profit in 2010, which is a year sooner than executives had previously said the company would become consistently profitable.
Ford has put its Taurus sedan in an online interactive game that extends USA Network's "White Collar" show, in which Taurus also takes a star turn. The game highlights Taurus and its on-board technology in a video rather than in animation, a narrative that parallels the structure of the TV show.
Your iPhone operates by the touch of your fingers. Why not your car? Auto makers are starting to roll out a new generation of dashboard technology that substitutes touch-sensitive pads and displays for knobs and switches and videogame-style graphics for drab two-dimensional displays. Technology created to power games, mobile phones and computer displays is now being adapted—and often significantly improved—for those two-ton hand-held devices that come with four tires and leather seats.
Ford Motor Company integrated social media into its marketing in a big way in 2009, and this year is moving 25% of its traditional media budget to the digital space. Earlier this week, Ford further demonstrated its commitment to social and digital tools as a way to reach out to new media and, of course, new audiences.
When Barry Judge, chief marketing officer of Best Buy, started his Twitter feed in mid-2008, he was anxious. He recalls fretting: "What if my tweets are boring, and what if no one follows me?" He had worked at Best Buy for more than eight years at that point but he was a social media neophyte. Now Judge finds himself tweeting a couple times a day. He has nearly 14,000 followers. Now he can't imagine doing his job without using social media, which he uses to communicate with Best Buy colleagues and customers.
We often talk about speed when describing certain kinds of businesses. Some companies are bureaucratic, slow, dysfunctional... others are fast... fast to market, fast to ship you something. Just like a car, though, there's an alternative to raw speed. Call it maneuverability. You might still take a long time to get up to perfect cruising speed, but you can initiate a turn on a dime. I'd put Ford in this category.
Ford is first off the blocks in 2010 with its clinching of both car and truck of the year at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The company won top honors for its hybrid Fusion and Transit Connect wagon. This year, Ford launches two critical vehicles that articulate in sheet metal CEO Alan Mulally's "One Ford" strategy of developing global automobiles, rather than distinct cars and trucks for distinct markets. On Monday, Ford did a live chat from Detroit with Jim Farley, group VP of marketing at the Dearborn, Mich.-based automaker. He fielded questions about how the company will use social media and the company's One Ford plan, and of course, the vehicles. He said the key to Ford's One Ford idea is, at its simplest, one car across the world.
He blew into the Ford Motor Company in 2006 as an outsider from a different industry, and he was hailed as the latest in a long line of purported saviors of a faltering, century-old automotive icon. At the time, skeptics in the clubby world of auto executives whispered that the newcomer, Alan R. Mulally, would be swallowed up by the complexities of the car business, his ebullient personality smothered by the feudal infighting for which Ford had long been famous. Yet three years into his tenure as chief executive — and with a host of still nettlesome challenges awaiting him — Mr. Mulally has thus far proved to be the unifying figure that Ford has needed for decades.
Ford recently wrapped the first chapter of its Fiesta Movement, leaving us distinctly wiser about marketing in the digital space. Ford gave 100 consumers a car for six months and asked them to complete a different mission every month. And away they went. At the direction of Ford and their own imagination, "agents" used their Fiestas to deliver Meals On Wheels. They used them to take Harry And David treats to the National Guard. They went looking for adventure, some to wrestle alligators, others actually to elope. All of these stories were then lovingly documented on YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter.
Kia Motors America and Microsoft Corp. are forming a partnership to equip Kia vehicles with a system that drivers and passengers can use to make phone calls and control the car's audio system using voice commands. The hands-free system, called UVO, will be offered in several Kia Motors Corp. vehicles by the end of the year, according to the auto maker. The first vehicle to offer it will be the 2011 Kia Sorento crossover, likely to be out around July.
Automakers ended a miserable year with a mixed December with Ford being the only three of the domestic companies to report higher sales in the month. The Ford Motor Company said Tuesday that its sales in the United States rose 33 percent in December from a year ago, making it the company’s best month since May 2008. For the year, Ford’s sales fell 15 percent.
The car business has been notoriously slow at embracing aspects of the Internet since the beginning. Social media is no exception. In 2010, more in the industry from manufacturers down to dealers will learn to engage in social media or be left behind.
Ford has reached a tentative agreement to sell its Volvo cars unit to Geely, the ambitious Chinese automaker, with a deal expected to be finalised early next year, the two companies said on Wednesday. Ford said in a statement that “all substantive commercial terms” had been settled, though financing and government approvals have yet to be finalised. Neither company would comment on the price, though sources close to the deal say it is in the region of $1.8bn-$2bn.
As carefully crafted brand images go, it's hard to beat Toyota's. Over a generation or so, Toyota (TM) built its reputation — and U.S. market share — on dependability, at a time when General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler couldn't shake being identified with lemons. The Japanese automaker initially built its lineup around fuel-efficient cars, while Detroit was focused on gas-guzzling SUVs. Mostly non-union Toyota opened U.S. plants and promised no layoffs for permanent workers. Detroit, meanwhile, laid off employees by the thousands and shuttered dozens of UAW-represented plants. But Detroit's nemesis lately has suffered through its own run of bad press, much of it involving a consumer hot-button: vehicle safety.
Ford Motor Co. is working to offer drivers a way to upgrade the electronics in their vehicles, much the same way they can add applications to their iPhones and BlackBerrys. The car maker hopes to persuade software developers to tap the Internet service, GPS location-finding capability and digital-music setup already found in its Sync entertainment-and-communications system, which it developed with Microsoft Corp. Such applications, or "apps," might do such things as give directions to every espresso shop along a highway open after 9 p.m., or allow friends to follow one another to a location through a GPS process called "breadcrumbing."
At this year's Media Mavens annual luncheon in New York, Advertising Age honored 16 of the industry's most innovative thinkers from big name marketers including Kraft, Coca-Cola, Ford and Burger King. Honorees, however, had to earn their lunch by answering questions that show off just how smart they are. Here are six bits of wisdom that Ad Age's Media Mavens imparted this year, including what their clients are looking for, what the necessary elements for a successful social media campaign are, how to evolve a well-known brand into a services company and what technologies have the potential to be successful marketing mediums.
Gone are the days of relying solely on boasts about towing capacities and horsepower to move the metal. Ford and Chevy dealers soon will start talking more about fuel economy and iPod outlets as the companies roll out new compact and subcompact cars.
Ford Motor Co., betting that U.S. drivers will embrace small cars with the amenities of larger models, is preparing to resume building subcompacts in North America for the first time since ending the Pinto in 1980. The domestic version of Ford's (F) new Fiesta was unveiled at the Los Angeles Auto Show on Tuesday, Dec. 2. It will feature seven air bags and voice-activated audio controls to help win buyers who might snub diminutive cars with substantial prices.
Ford Motor Co. is expanding its partnership with Best Buy after a pilot program in Dallas resulted in increasing consideration among participants for all Ford brands. Ford dealerships will now work with local Best Buy stores in Pennsylvania and California to kick off independent customer clinics. About 70% of those who participated in the demos over the past 30 days say they are now more likely to consider buying a Ford, Lincoln or Mercury product. About 80% said that understanding how to use the hands-free Ford Sync system improved their overall opinion of Ford.
It's all here. The 170-miles-per-gallon diesel hybrid. The pure electric car that Volkswagen calls a 21st-century Beetle. A variety of models with small gasoline engines that promise good power and mileage. And, of course, the diesels that are a VW forte and that the automaker is sure will have a major role in meeting the market's fuel-economy demands for a while. More than gee-whiz, VW showed off its visions for the future in a technical briefing at a motorsports park here recently for one reason: to demonstrate how it can meet its ambitious goals in an atmosphere of auto-industry crisis and ever-stricter emissions and mileage regulations.
From a holistic perspective, we talk about the need for organizations to become more socially calibrated—able to adapt and respond to changes both externally and internally. The three areas where emergent outcomes can manifest are, participation with your customers, collaboration between your employees and optimization in the interactions/transactions between your business and its partners. Digging into customer participation, it’s clear that in a networked economy customers demand engagement, information, support and ultimately, value and ecosystems such as Twitter are beginning to deliver here.
The wretched economy has forced many consumers to, well, consume less, or at least less avidly than they did before the bubble — or bubbles, if you count Wall Street and real estate — burst. What, then, has that meant for the cause marketers, which depend on the kindness of shoppers to raise funds for nonprofit organizations, associations and assorted other doers of good deeds?
Bing and Google recently announced partnerships with Twitter and Facebook to provide elements of real-time and social search to their respective search engine results. On the surface, this probably blew past most business owners and marketers as not much in the way of being important. If the information is online, aren’t Bing and Google supposed to find it? And, frankly, the partnership has some interesting implications, but isn’t phenomenally noteworthy … yet.
Companies approach social in one of two ways: The first way, companies experiment with little order or goals, the second way, companies have clear goals and intend to invest in a deeper relationship.
Can social media sell cars? Ford Motors seems to think so. Fresh off the Ford Fiesta Movement, the American car maker is announcing another social media initiative designed to once again combine the passionate voices of happy Ford owners with the distribution opportunities made available through social media channels. Fusion 41, part of the Ford Drive One campaign, is a brand new challenge and campaign seeking 8 passionate 2010 Ford Fusion or Fusion Hybrid owners with an active social media presence.
Hilary McHone, 35, speaks directly into a camera as she lolls in bed, describing her day shooting an internal video for Ford. "What was neat was that I got to be ‘talent'," McHone says, using her fingers to put virtual parentheses around the word. The video is one of hundreds on a Ford site created to market its upcoming Fiesta subcompact. McHone is among of 100 "agents" that Ford has enlisted to drum up enthusiasm for the Ford Fiesta, which it's unveiling in the U.S. before it goes on sale in June. McHone's videos and others featured on the marketing site, fiestamovement.com, are supposed to help to generate early buzz for the brand, which will be aimed at 14- to 30-year-olds. Ford isn't paying the agents, but it did loan each of them a car for six months.
Ford Motor Co.'s "Drive One" campaign has helped the brand's perception when it comes to rational reasons for buying, such as safety and durability. But it was lacking on the emotional side, which the automaker is focusing on in a second round of marketing. This next phase, which is heavy on TV ads but also uses out-of-home (targeted, interestingly, at Beltway opinion leaders), social media, newspapers and an innovative promotion offering a donation to local schools in exchange for a Ford test drive, breaks Oct. 10.
Google Inc., a champion of the belief that advertising should be less about art and more about science, is embracing its inner creative side. As it searches for new growth, the company in recent months has focused more on creating custom ad campaigns spanning multiple Google services for big spenders including Hewlett-Packard Co. and Ford Motor Co. Since the summer, Google has helped J.C. Penney Co. and PepsiCo Inc.'s Quaker Oats unit launch ad campaigns on YouTube and on some of the hundreds of thousands of sites across which Google sells display ads, along with search ads.
Every day, legions of new web sites appear, each competing for eyeballs and dollars. This presents an acute problem for companies. As consumers are presented with a vast array of online campaigns vying for their attention, businesses are grappling with the best way to target and engage them. Many are increasingly adopting an aggressive web-based strategy around sub-branding. So that rather than plaster the internet with, say, glossy blue-and-white logos, Ford, the motor company, is creating online communities for each of its vehicle lines.
Companies as diverse as McDonald's, Ford, and American Express are revamping their marketing to win back that most valuable of corporate assets.
Chinese carmakers are venturing on to the global stage with bids for Western brands from Volvo and Hummer to Saab, but there are doubts these inexperienced firms can manage the transformation such deals would bring. "Getting involved in European companies is likely to bring a complexity of personnel management that will blow their minds," said Graeme Maxton, a Europe-based independent auto industry analyst, noting Chinese companies' poor track record of managing their businesses.
Ford is into the eighth month of its Fiesta Movement social-media program to promote the eponymous car from Europe by letting 100 young social-media-savvy Americans drive the vehicles for several months. Each month, Ford has been assigning tasks to the "Agents" involving lots of driving and just as much blogging, Twittering, YouTubing and Flickring. This month, they will be sent to do things likely to generate more attention than what they have previously done, including training with U.S. Navy SEALS, learning to cook with insects, and going hiking in the Rockies.
The buzz for the arrival of the 2010 Ford Fiesta subcompact car in the United States is building. That's no small task, given that Ford hasn't sold a car called the Fiesta in the United States since the period from 1978 to 1980.
Ford is making safety, infotainment and drivetrain technology important keys to driving consumer interest and sales. But Jim Buczkowski, the automaker's director of global electrical and electronic systems, says it isn't enough to load gadgets onto the dashboard. On-board technology, he argues, must be easy to use, functional and affordable -- because ultimately, he says, one's car is as important a living space as one's living room.
A number of dim bulbers emailed me this week to complain that it was dumb for spokesceleb Mike Rowe to add the phrase "why not?" to the end of Ford's tagline "why Ford, why now" in a new TV commercial. I actually don't like the "why now" part.
Spend and you will get buzz. That seems to be one takeaway from YouGov's BrandIndex, which compiled daily feedback from thousands of consumers for the first half of the year in order to find out which brands consumers are buzzing about and which brands they're not.
Dying to hear how the stereo system of an Infiniti convertible sounds? Check your mobile phone. The automaker has a mobile music application that runs on Facebook and plays melodies on mobile phones while users ogle pictures of the new G37 convertible. The Tokyo-based auto company is also buying text ads on mobile news feeds and embedded spots for mobile video.
In a move that will put a smile on the faces of local newspaper publisher, at least for a day, nearly 3,000 of the roughly 3,700 U.S. Ford, Lincoln and Mercury dealers will run mostly full-page ads in local newspapers this Sunday. Unlike traditional ads from individual retailers that push sales, the executions are more corporate in tone. Ford Motor Co. and JWT's Retail First arm, Dearborn, Mich., created eight different templates for the "advertorials" for the dealers to customize with their own local ad agencies, said Kim Cape, retail marketing manager at the automaker.
You know you're old when songs you listened to when you were a kid are being used to brand old fogey cars. It's common for musicians of all ages to sell their music to advertisers. Beck and the Who have done it, as have Feist and the Rolling Stones. It's not just a crass sellout anymore, but rather crass marketing strategy: ads get heard more often than songs on radio stations, so getting into a commercial is just one of a menu of options that include inclusion in the soundtrack of a movie, or appearing in a teen drama on TV.
Ford chief executive Alan Mulally is famous for one of the first decisions he made after joining the automotive company in 2006. Barely three months into his tenure, Mulally borrowed big, using his company as collateral. At the time, the decision raised eyebrows, but it is now widely regarded as a masterstroke. The $26bn he raised, when financing was still cheap and available, has enabled Ford to avoid bankruptcy or the need to seek government handouts. It has also led to a growing recognition that, compared with ailing rivals Chrysler and General Motors, Ford is in much better financial shape for the long haul.
It’s not every day that the president of the United States plugs your company’s product, but it happened to Alan Mulally on Tuesday, when President Obama took to the Rose Garden to unveil the administration’s new fuel economy initiative. Surrounded by environmental activists, government officials and the chief executives of the Big Three Detroit auto companies, Mr. Obama declared that by 2016, the car companies would have to produce vehicles that got, on average, 35.5 miles per gallon, a big jump from the current 27.5 miles per gallon.
BzzAgent aims to turn chatterbox volunteers into long-term brand ambassadors companies can mine for product insight and feedback.
It’s no secret that American car companies are in trouble these days. With those troubles comes a huge spike in buzz for each respective company. Some would argue, despite the bad news, this increased public focus is an opportunity for auto brands to reposition in the market. Here is a quick look at how the bad news out of Detroit is playing out and who is making strides.
The breakdown of two of Detroit's Big Three is bringing urgency to the scramble among the world's automakers to forge alliances with former rivals, carve inroads into new markets and shop for well-known brands.
Ford, a longtime sponsor of Fox's "American Idol," wants to get tushes in the cushes -- not just to watch the show but also to drive a Ford Fusion or Fusion Hybrid. The company, which has had a major presence on "Idol" since launching the Ford Focus back in the early years of the century, is dangling the show's finale as a carrot to get people to showrooms.
In its heyday, Ford Motor Co.'s Michigan Truck plant generated up to $3.7 billion a year in profits building sports utility vehicles. On Wednesday, the auto maker will detail plans to convert the plant to produce a compact car that never made a nickel in the U.S. Building a profitable Ford Focus small-car line will require huge changes in how the vehicles are equipped and assembled. By one estimate, the earlier-model Ford Focus lost as much as $1 billion a year. But Ford believes it now has a new formula to turn those losses into steady profits.
Considering the sophistication of humans as mammals, it is still interesting how we are doomed to repeat the same behavioral patterns as our primate ancestors, even when is comes to social media.
Ford is betting the success of the Fiesta subcompact on the blogs, tweets and Facebook updates of 100 people who will live with the cars and share their experiences online. It's a hell of a gamble, but if it pays off, Ford just might recast itself as a cool company with a great product -- no small feat for an American automaker.
Atlanta-based social media company Vitrue says it has promulgated the first-ever ranking of automotive brands. It's not a ranking by quality, durability, design, fuel-efficiency, looks, gadgets, widgets or steering-wheel padding. No, this list is about auto-brand sociability.
Ford has recruited 100 "young, Web-savvy" consumers to drive its Fiesta subcompact for six months and then chatter about it online, in hopes that they'll serve as "opinion leaders" and "build a collective of digital storytellers" a full year before the car is available for sale. It's a big idea to start the sales conversation many moons before dealerships start twisting arms, but I fear that Ford has got the substance of it all wrong.
Yesterday evening I co-hosted a tweetup in New York City where Ford was unveiling the new Ford Fiesta and a brilliantly conceived social media program to get 100 influencers to take the car on an extended test drive for 6 months as part of the Ford Fiesta Movement. The event was a gathering designed to help put a more human face on Ford and talk about a new Ford car that many of the 20 and 30 somethings who showed up (and are the target market for the Fiesta) may not have known about.
Auto makers must boost fuel economy under new government regulations, and a sure way to do that is promote small cars. But that poses a challenge for Detroit: How can the Big Three battle back in a market segment dominated by foreign rivals such as Toyota and Honda?
What do Toby Keith, the Professional Bull Riders Association and Monster Jam have in common? Fans and trucks. Ford has made reaching those fans central to marketing its F-150 pickup for years. Whether by giving fans a chance to be roadies for a Toby Keith concert for a weekend or win tickets to a bull-riding show, the company has activated its associations with those events, and similar ones in complementary categories with promotions dangling new trucks and experiences.
Ford has launched new programs to get the word out about the top-selling pickup truck in the U.S., and best-selling vehicle in the country for 27 years. There is both a new TV spot touting the safety features of the truck and an extension of the Dearborn, Mich. automaker's ongoing promotional relationship with country star Toby Keith.
Suddenly, the wind is at Ford's back. Maybe it's the rising quality of its cars. Maybe it's the halo surrounding Ford for passing up federal funds being devoured by its Detroit rivals. Or it could simply be Ford's focus on building image in its marketing while others flog incentives. But for whatever reason, America seems to have decided that Ford is a better idea after all.
Ford Motor Co.'s marketing budget will remain about the same as it was in 2008 -- despite declining industry sales -- because the company is launching a number of important new and redesigned vehicles, including the Ford Fusion.
Ford Motor Co.'s campaign for its redone 2010 Ford Fusion new hybrid model is aimed at people who aren't in the market to buy a car -- at least not today.
If ever there was a time in which automotive companies needed to figure out how to talk with--not at--customers and voting citizens, this is it.
At Ford, Scott Monty is using social media to remake the automaker's image—and reinvigorate its culture.
Despite its looming demise, the American auto industry dismissed demands for brand reduction in December 2008. Forced by the federal government into a mea culpa that was supposed to include plans for drastic cost-cutting and other reformative measures, GM was expected to agree to eliminate a handful of its brands. But GM went no further than admitting it should streamline Pontiac, keep Hummer for sale and maybe ditch Saab.
Ford wants to call its Fusion Hybrid the most fuel efficient mid-size car, Toyota says no you can't.
We all know brands are using Twitter — whether or not you want them around. Some of them don’t quite get the medium and just tweet self-serving links or marketing speak, but you won’t find any of those brands here. We’ve handpicked 40 of the best brands experimenting with the micro-blogging platform, and asked them a few short questions about how they’re using Twitter.
Twitter, a booming micro-blogging service, is inspiring business to manage its message in 140 characters or less. Its streams of short text messages, publicly broadcast over the web, are being treated as the new frontline of internet conversation.
n declining any of the $17.4 billion the government is giving Detroit, Ford Motor Co. instantly earned the admiration and appreciation of a frustrated and cash-strapped U.S. consumer base that, once this recession ends, eventually will make its way back into auto showrooms.
Chrysler said late today it will shut down all its plants at the end of the last shift on Dec. 19, with factory workers not back to work before Jan. 19. Despite that, the automaker will continue some current marketing efforts. Both Ford and GM have made similar moves.
The Washington hearings that brought automakers Alan Mulally, Robert Nardelli and Rick Wagoner to Capitol Hill to plead their case for bridge loans not only failed to give the loan bill legs in Congress, but has also hurt consumers' consideration of Detroit auto brands, according to a new survey by Synovate Motoresearch.
Promising a slew of new green vehicles, the troubled Detroit automaker is turning to top design firms to make those cars innovative and appealing.
After Congress told Detroit's Big Three CEOs to get back on their private jets and come back with a detailed plan the next time they came asking for a $25 billion loan, it was abundantly clear that GM, Ford and Chrysler had all terribly missed the mark from a PR and communications perspective.
Auto makers are a Web-savvy bunch, known for using sophisticated digital-marketing techniques to promote their vehicles. Now, amid an industry crisis, they are using some of the same strategies to lobby for billions of dollars in federal aid.
How a radical change in both design and workflow revived an automaker who seemed doomed to go belly up.
The Big Three auto makers will submit recovery plans to Congress on Tuesday that emphasize cost-cutting, downsizing and renewed emphasis on higher-mileage cars in a bid to win support for a federal bailout.
As the Detroit auto companies contend with their worst financial crisis in decades, the most famous American auto executive has stayed largely out of sight. But William C. Ford Jr., the executive chairman and scion of the founding family of the Ford Motor Company, has been preparing for a bigger role in the industry’s plan for survival.
I was in Detroit last week... I have family there. I also drive a car. And I would rather that the world doesn't melt and the economy thrive. So I'm uniquely qualified to weigh in on the automobile industry.
If you think you're insulated from the death rattle of Detroit, think again.
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