Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Trying to "follow" the Fiesta Movement, but it's sooooo stupid sometimes

Ford's "Fiesta Movement" campaign, is it working? The idea was to get 100 Euro-Spec Fiestas in the hands of "Agents" who will get the car free for six months and help promote the car ahead of the US intro next year. Young "Tech Savy" hip kids who'll jump through hoops and Tweet the hell out of it.

Tweet, FB, YouTube, what ever their choice, they'll use the "Social Networking" sites to generate buzz about the car. And in an effort to "follow" I myself have joined FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube and even LinkedIn to see how they're doing. I "follow" a couple of "agents" on several sites and of course Scott Monty FoMoCo's guru of Social Media on Twitter. But I'm not learning much about the Fiesta at all. I'm seeing cute/funny kids making stupid videos of themselves, sometimes with friends sitting in the cars and giggling. I'm reading reports about "stolen" Fiestas, that weren't really stolen, just impounded because it was parked illegally.
Ocassionally there'll be some video of the kids playing with the SYNC system, but it's never informative in any real substansial way. These "agents" are promoting themselves more than the car. Several are comedians, actors, or just Idiots as in the case of the Brooklyn New York agent.
I tried to have an open mind about the entire thing, I really did, but how many cars are going to be sold because of the "Movement"? Will the 100 agents buy them? Some of these folks didn't even know how to drive a stick shift until they were handed the keys.
Now, to be fair, there are an additional 40 or so press cars that are being assigned to journalists and "Mommie Bloggers" so that they can write about their impressions. Ford is also aparently doing this with the new Hybrid Escape and Fusion, the Mommie Blogger thing anyway.
Does this generate any real buzz? I know I'm a little light headed from watching stupid YouTube videos and reading stupid tweets and blogs, but dizzy doesn't equal buzz.
Well, that's not fair or true, I do know that several Agents have appeared on local TV stations, on morning shows or local news, so I guess there is some buzz to it, but what about the Internet?
I'm not making any friends by writing this and crushing any hopes that Ford would ever let me drive a new car. But let's face it, they weren't going to before this anyway. I'm a man in my 40's who's not interested in putting my mug on YouTube or being someone's dancing bear.

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