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Ford uses social media to make brand more personal
Jake Himmelspach

Key strategies in building online business-to-customer relationships are transparency, authenticity, listening and valuable content, a Ford Motor Co. executive said Thursday.

The West Michigan Chapter of the American Marketing Association hosted Scott Monty, global digital and multimedia communications manager for Ford Motor Co, at a local event focusing on social media. Monty heads Ford's efforts in that arena.

Monty told the story of how the auto-making behemoth used social media as a way to humanize the company and, ultimately, increase sales. According to a March 25 Bloomberg.com report, the efforts are working. Ford has a 77 percent favorability rating, beating out Honda by seven points.

The big differentiator was Ford's decision to pass on bailout money, which gave the company a certain level of "goodwill" with the consumer, said Monty. He continued by saying that it is the company's responsibility not to squander that goodwill, which is partially achieved by building meaningful relationships with customers through social media.

Ford is currently running a campaign for the Ford Fiesta, which will be released in the U.S. this summer. The campaign put Fiestas in the hands of roughly 100 people who are active on social media sites and asked them to make one short video a month about their experience with the car.

That campaign generated 7 million YouTube views, 750,000 hits on Flickr, 4 million comments on Twitter and, most importantly, 100,000 people who want to learn more about the Fiesta once it's released stateside. Out of those 100,000, 97 percent are not Ford drivers.

Social media's most common devil's advocate is the question, "What's the ROI on social media?" Monty stated that the question needs to be narrowed down to, "What's the ROI of a specific campaign?" To make measuring the ROI of a social media campaign more tangible, Monty said that the variables one decides to measure should be setup before the campaign.

He stressed it's easy to get caught up in the hype of social media, and it's just as easy to ignore it altogether. No matter what side companies favor, Monty stressed that "the tools don't matter — they will change. It's about the behavior."

Monty highlighted his point by telling a story about Ford CEO Alan Mulally. During a press conference, Mulally was fielding an onslaught of questions while Monty was furiously posting Twitter comments from his phone. One of the responses to Monty's Twitter posts was from a person wishing they could ask Mulally questions directly. As Mulally came off the stage, Monty asked, "Alan, would you mind taking a few questions on Twitter?"Mulally responded, "Sure! What's Twitter?"