American Cars and the Internets

In my driving lifetime, I've never been a fan of American cars.  Stale and boring with none of the detail taken by every other manufacturer in the world.  Well other than a '60 Corvette Roadster in Tuxedo Black or a Marina Blue '67 427 L71.

Needless to say the American car companies have poured and continue to pour money into broadcast TV.  Beer, American car and Viagra ads have propped up TV ads for years.  They haven't been sure about this here internet?  Barely a dipped toe.  Any attempt beyond banner ads has been a disaster.

Enter Scott Monty at Ford.  Charged with connecting people to the brand with social media.  My definition of social media usually includes a conversation, but that's another story.  I ran across this vid this morning about the MSFT Sync software in Ford vehicles.  Good stuff!

Comments

[Scott Monty]

Oh, I don't know, Matt. Conversations can pop up anywhere.

While traditional advertising will continue to play a role in the marketing mix of large brands (because despite the lack of metrics, there's still the lure of the sheer numbers of eyeballs), I think we're going to be seeing a shift to the more personalized and contextually relevant interactions in the digital space.

And while that mean one-at-a-time engagement or influencer-based communication, it will begin to shift the culture - something that may take a little time to do, but that will be worthwhile in the end.

Thanks so much for picking up on this video. We're really proud of it (even though the device looks like a Zune - SYNC works with most mp3 players, especially iPods).

Scott Monty
Global Digital Communications
Ford Motor Company