Going back to the first post, I agree with Bill that this really wasn’t too much of a “risk” for Ford. I believe the agents will have a bias since they did receive a free vehicle + gas money, but as someone else mentioned later on, it’s unavoidable for such a big purchase. What I think is brilliant about this campaign is that by organizing monthly “events” for the agents to do, Ford is able to shape the kind of personality that they want the Fiesta to have. My experience with the campaign is simply from articles so far and one article posted a video of one of the agents “trying something new” as it was told by Ford to do so that month. From that example, Ford is creating an identity for the Fiesta that says those who drive Fiestas are adventurous, interesting, fun, and of course, they “like” to try new things.

I think the main point of this campaign is not to gain consumer insight from 100 people as I’m sure lots of research was done before the campaign was launched, I believe it is to create a image for the Fiesta brand that reaches it’s target market using the most appropriate channel to that target. It just happens that this group doesn’t require you to spend all that much on reaching them either!

I actually see this arrangement as somewhat of a customer focus group but in a more visible and accessible form. I have owned cars from GM, Ford, Chrysler, Nissan, and Mitsubishi over the last 22 years. I have been eager to see how much more consumers could get into the loop of product development in such a way they would have greater influence. It seemed that a lot of that consumer influence is after the sale – service or usability complaints that result in changes for the next refresh or the long-time loss in market share for the US-based manufacturers because of these concerns.

I cannot imaging any car evaulation that does not contain some element of bias. I hear many, many friends talk about their particular vehicles on the basis of their experience with very few manufacturers. They’ve bought repeatedly because of perception from word-of-mouth or ownership experiences from many years earlier. Cars are not a frequently purchased item for many people, thus, overcoming bias is no small feat.

I applaud Ford for taking a risk. I want to see what people will say and how that works its way into the product development process. That is a larger measure of success, in my mind, of this arrangement.

To answer your question, making people anonymous would completely and entirely defeat the purpose of the entire Fiesta Movement.

Huh? What? But I thought it was about getting honest feedback from a measly 100 people!?

Wrong! That’s my point entirely! The reason Ford chose the 100 agents they did was NOT because they thought they would be sure proof positive reviewers, it was because of their “social vibrancy” (Translated: their massive online [or otherwise] followings that will channel to a larger audience than 30 facebook friends).

Ford is looking at the big picture here, NOT for feedback from 100 people.

If Ford was looking for some nifty feedback from 100 people that they could turn around and use in commercials why would they have made such a big deal about spreading the word?

Why pick people based on existing followings?

Why not just pick 100 Ford fans?

In fact, on the Ford Focus forums I belong to people are whining left and right that Ford picked a bunch of people that “don’t deserve it” and they are making claims like “this will come back to get them” because they think the crowd chosen was [for the most part] NOT loyal, and instead picked due to their large followings.

Duh! That’s the point!

Brandon-

I hate to make someone post the dead horse picture… so I guess just read what I wrote to guhmshoo- I think that about sums it up.

I don’t see why people are so fixated on thinking Ford is out to create some massive conspiracy and pool the wool of the eyes of the world in some master minded evil plan.

It’s just a cool, smart, cheap way [one more reason Ford is doing better than their Detroit rivals- they are smarter] to spread news (ANY NEWS!) about a neat car they are bringing to market.

Agent, Mark Kleis