UGC Case Study: Ford Fiesta Movement

This user-generated content case study focuses on Ford’s 2013 Fiesta Movement campaign, which harnessed the social content creation skills of 100 brand ambassadors to engage a diverse millennial audience.

Contents

  1. Agents And Missions
  2. Niche Engagement
  3. Natural Brand Moments

1. Agents And Missions

To help promote the 2014 Fiesta, Ford recruited 100 social content creators, which were known as Fiesta agents throughout the campaign. Each agent was loaned a customized 2014 Ford Fiesta for a year (with comprehensive fuel, insurance and parking reimbursements) in exchange for completing a monthly mission, and creating a video that documented the mission.

Fiesta agent missions included staging a fake Running Of The Bulls on Venice Beach,

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eating 24 marshmallows in less than 5 minutes,

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learning to hang glide,

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and many more.

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Although only a fraction of the missions directly involved the Fiesta (e.g. make a song using the Fiesta as an instrument, race your Fiesta at the Willow Springs Raceway), throughout all the missions the Fiesta was clearly depicted as the adventure-enabler. It’s what brought the agents to their missions, just as it could bring American millennials to their own adventures.

2. Niche Engagement

The Fiesta agents comprised a diverse array of interest groups (e.g. fitness, fashion, car tech, music), each with significant social fanbases (many agents have over 100k YouTube followers). Thus, the Ford Fiesta message was able to be micro-tailored on a large scale, far more so than a single agency could pull off.

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The Klout profiles of Fiesta agents depict their impressive social influence and breadth of content themes.

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3. Natural Brand Moments

Some of the best Fiesta Movement content occurred outside of the monthly missions in the form of natural posts that showed how the Fiesta truly was an adventure-enabler for the agent, and not just promo-fodder. This was possible because the agents were given Fiestas for a long enough time to truly develop a relationship with the car (partly evidenced by how sad the agents were when they had to return the Fiestas to Ford).

One agent loved the Fiesta Movement so much she got a tattoo of the logo.

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