The compact car landscape has changed significantly over the past several years. Once upon a time, back when UrbanRacer was just hitting the online landscape, the Honda Civic was the epitome of an econo-box commuter car that uniquely became an enthusiast favorite, customized and personalized in massive numbers.

A few years later, a new car company named Scion came to the playground with their toys, and utilized a unique marketing approach and close connection to the aftermarket to take the small car segment by storm.

Six years on, a former Scion executive finds himself at Ford marketing a great subcompact that has long been an icon in Europe, but is largely foreign to United States' consumers. His strategy to campaign the sixth generation of the coupe is to import 100 cars from Germany and put them in the hands of "social influencers" around the U.S. for six months, in essence letting them sell the car for Ford.

The "Fiesta Movement" is more than halfway through its six-month run. More than 4,000 application videos were submitted via YouTube, but the top 100 influencers were hand-picked by Ford to drive a customized version of the Ford Fiesta for six months free of gas, car insurance and maintenance.

Each Fiesta Movement "Agent" is tasked to perform one "Mission" per month for each of the six months and produce viral content documenting that mission. All missions and content are aggregated on FiestaMovement.com for anyone to enjoy.

Admittedly, when we first heard about the Fiesta coming to North America, we were a bit skeptical, if only for the fact that we never get anything cool here - be it from Japan or Europe. As more media outlets began to praise the cars as innovative and a hoot to drive, however, our interest was piqued.

The clincher for us was watching Fiestas compete fiercely at the Pikes Peak Hill Climb (http://www.urbanracer.com/articles/anmviewer.asp?a=3901) and X Games (http://www.urbanracer.com/articles/anmviewer.asp?a=3917). After those brilliant displays, we knew we had to find out more.

We reached out to Ford to take a closer look at the Fiesta Movement. We caught up with Connie Fontaine, Brand Content and Alliance Manager for Ford, for a quick Q&A session about the project.

We also sat down with four Agents to document their cars and stories. Over the next few weeks, we will immerse you in the particulars of this unique campaign, take a look at how it came to be, and give you a taste of what life is like for an Agent.

UrbanRacer: Sum up a bit what you do for Ford.
Connie Fontaine: My responsibility is to get consumers to experience our product through things like movies, television shows and ride-and-drives. I work on everything from placement in TV show "American Idol" music videos to major motion pictures to events big and small.

We've have five different teams setting up Fiestas at specific test drives across the country. Just recently we had a large installment at the Taste of Chicago and at the X-Games, but we also do smaller events in local neighborhoods where people are out interacting with others and doing things such as shopping, socializing, or maybe watching a sporting event.

We want to give people an opportunity to sit down and drive the car and experience what it's all about. We found that when you get people behind the wheel, that's where the magic happens.

UR: How did Fiesta Movement develop from drawing board to being live?
CF: This particular opportunity came up to pre-launch a vehicle that was already launched in another country - that never happens with us. Usually, our product launches are either in the U.S. first, or our European products don't have any crossover with the U.S. product, so to have the vehicle launched already in Europe, it was a unique opportunity to explore some new opportunities.

Jim Farley, who is our Group Vice President of Global Marketing, came to us from Toyota and Lexus, and he has brought some great ideas to our team. We were in a meeting and he asked us what we could do with a "bunch" of vehicles. Our team sat together and came up with some different ideas. The "Fiesta Movement" started as working with 100 cars and letting people "pass them on" to their friends and other people.

When we started getting into logistics, the viral part started to become really challenging. We needed to make sure that the Agents, as we began to call them, were keeping the cars in good shape, and we needed to keep track of where the cars are and who is driving them, and that was seeming to be a bit overwhelming. The next solution was to get people to "pass the car on" virtually thru social media and get the "word of mouth" out via the web. We really wanted to get the style, design, and function of the car out in the public and get people to experience it, and we knew people would fall in love with it from there.

UR: How was the decision to use social media made?
CF: We work on influencer strategy all the time with celebrities and people who are in unique positions to captivate an audience, and were looking to see how we could utilize that with this project. We started to realize that there were people out there with 50,000 subscribers on YouTube or 60k followers on Twitter who could get the message out to masses of people. These people aren't exactly "celebrities" in that the general public doesn't know who they are if they walk down the street, but their online personas are well-known in their own circles, and their influence is pretty powerful.

We then came up with the next step of giving our Agents Missions to keep the Agents involved and to try and get them to interact with the car in different ways.

UR: UrbanRacer viewers have seen the Fiesta at X-Games and Pikes Peak - what other types of placement have you worked on with the Fiesta?
CF: We had a placement in a music video for "American Idol" with one of our Squeeze-colored Fiestas that showed a fiesta navigating through a traffic jam. We have some upcoming placements in an upcoming movie and on some TV shows, but not everything is finalized just yet.

As we develop our marketing plan, we're always looking for opportunities for exposure, and evaluate them on case-by-case basis. If we get a really big project, then we might not have to do as many different projects to get the buzz we're looking for.  We also have some digital partnerships with select brands like MySpace, the "will-it-blend" guys, and a few others.

UR: We're about halfway through this project. What's been the most eye-opening part of how it has gone?
CF: We've really been surprised at the amount of content that is being created outside of the Missions. We wanted people to drive the cars, and we asked them to do one Mission per month to keep them involved, but the sheer amount of content that everyone is generating on their own has been overwhelming and a huge surprise. We have found that our Agents are life-streaming their lives via fiestamovement.com, and there's so many updates daily that talk about the Fiesta that we never would have expected these cars to be so involved with their day-to-day activities.

UR: What happens to these cars after they go back to Ford?
CF: We are constantly getting feedback from all of our Agents, but once the project is over we will be looking back to see how our Agents used our cars. We've already seen more than 500,000 miles put on these 100 cars, but we also are seeing some interesting trends with the cars.

On Flickr, within days of people getting our cars, we started to see Agents taking photos of themselves inside the hatch of the cars, which shows us that people really like the cargo space and the size of the trunk area. Also, we noticed that many Agents are naming their cars, which shows that Agents are treating these cars as a personable part of their lives.

We may use tidbits like that in our marketing of the car. Overall, though, these vehicles are in the country for the purpose of testing, so we're fulfilling a lot of EPA requirements and giving monthly results and feedback to fulfill our obligations with the government.

UR: Is Ford satisfied with Fiesta Movement's results so far? Would they do it again?
CF: We're extremely pleased with the way this project has developed. Because of the vast number of vehicles involved, it isn't likely that we would do a project of this size again, simply because it would appear as a copycat of the Fiesta Movement. Right now, we have more than three million-plus views on the videos on YouTube alone.

The Fiesta Movement was partially about the Fiesta, but also about Ford Motor Company and where we are headed as a company. Sometimes, the only way to show our great technology and product story is to get people behind the wheel. The more we get people behind the wheel, the more people are surprised or satisfied with what they experience. You will definitely see more of that interaction in the future - we want to have people connecting with our cars and sharing their experience with the media and through social media.

UR: When is the final Fiesta product set to be launched here in the U.S.?
CF: We have our OEM Reveal scheduled for the Los Angeles Auto Show. We have some exciting festivities planned around that, but we can't let the cat out of the bag just yet on what that will entail. The consumer will be able to purchase the car in summer 2010 for the 2011 production year.

UR: What other activities and projects do you have between now and the launch of the car in summer 2010?
CF: We are trying to figure out something as big and as successful as the Fiesta Movement, although nothing is finalized just yet. We will definitely make sure that the content which is being generated continues to live virally and we want to continue to allow our consumers to tell the story about their experience with the car. We want the same flavor as what we have now, the personal stories of adventures shared through the Ford Fiesta is really powerful and amazing.

Next week, we will bring you some interviews and content generated by some of the Fiesta Movement agents. Stay tuned to UrbanRacer!

fiestamovement.com/

Photo Gallery

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