Building Customer Awareness

One important goal of our marketing and communications activities is to increase consumers’ knowledge of our products and our corporate performance. We are particularly focused on improving consumers’ awareness of the company’s quality, safety, environmental and social performance. We use a wide range of communication methods to share information about Ford with potential customers and to get feedback from drivers. This Sustainability Report is one key element of that strategy. We also engage in two-way communications with consumers and other stakeholders through a variety of stakeholder engagement forums.

In 2012 we introduced a new global brand promise, which is summarized by the phrase “Go Further.” Put simply, Go Further represents our culture and what makes Ford different from any other automaker. It promises that we are always going to go further to deliver a strong business that builds great products for a better world. While Go Further is used for marketing and advertising, it is much more than a tagline. It’s about how Ford employees deliver ingenious products, make them available to everyone and believe in serving each other, our customers and our communities.

These communication efforts – coupled with delivering products of world-class quality, with world-class fuel economy, technology and other features – are paying off. From 2012 to 2013, we saw increases in favorable opinion for our brands in Germany, South Africa, and the U.K. We saw increases in purchase consideration for our brands in Germany, Mexico, South Africa, and Thailand. Some of the increases were quite large. For example, from 2012 to 2013 favorable opinion increased by 4 percentage points in South Africa, and purchase consideration increased by 11 percentage points in Thailand, 7 percentage points in South Africa.

In the U.S. market, fuel economy continues to be a top consideration for new vehicle shoppers. Advertising communications in 2013 were focused on telling Ford’s fuel economy story with a specific focus on increasing awareness of EcoBoost®. The EcoBoost engine provides an “AND” solution by combining power and fuel efficiency. Ford nameplates were featured in the “AND not OR” campaign, which showed why a vehicle that gives an AND solution is so much better than having to choose between this OR that. By the end of 2013, familiarity of EcoBoost had increased by 25 percent compared to 2012.

We track consumers’ familiarity with, opinion and consideration of, and shopping and purchase intentions in regard to our vehicles as part of our brand value and awareness tracking. Tracking these elements helps us to understand how consumers view our vehicles and where we need to focus our product development and communications efforts to improve consumers’ perceptions of and interest in our vehicles.

Social Media

Social media continues to be a mainstream communication channel, providing a relevant, quick and organic way to connect with consumers in the spaces they most like to visit. We continue to use established social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Vine, while staying connected with the continuous entry of new platforms. We also engage with influencers within those platforms to build conversation, awareness and excitement about Ford products.

Ford was the first automaker to reveal vehicles via social media. We have been an innovator in this space by launching and publicizing vehicles through programs like Escape Routes, a campaign that combined social media and a primetime television reality show, and Fiesta Movement, an ongoing campaign using real Fiesta drivers as “agents” who fulfil special missions with their Fiestas each month and report on those missions through social media channels. We continued the Fiesta Movement program to support the launch of the 2014 Fiesta. For this campaign, we gave 100 social media influencers a 2014 Fiesta and everything they needed to undertake monthly missions based on themes such as Social Advocacy, Travel, Gaming and Adventure. Fiesta Movement Agents created, filmed and shared each mission in their own authentic voice. These missions as well as other communications that the agents socialized reached tens of millions of followers, via YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms. Through this program, social advocates created over 14,000 pieces of content, delivering information to more than 3 billion potential users.¹

We continue to actively use Twitter to engage with consumers on all matters, including customer service. We answer questions, provide information and give customers help when needed. The volume of requests we have handled through our @FordService Twitter account has more than tripled in three years, and our customer satisfaction rates for communications through this platform are 92 percent or higher. Twitter also remains the best resource for real-time assessment of what people are saying about us and provides us with a valuable platform for listening.

Other Nontraditional Marketing

We use a range of other nontraditional marketing and communications efforts to increase awareness of our products and engage consumers and stakeholders. Through our Drive One campaign in North America, for example, we offer opportunities for people to experience our vehicles firsthand. The goal of Drive One is to encourage people who might not otherwise be considering a Ford product to see for themselves what we offer. Drive One is based on our belief that, when people drive our vehicles, they will have more positive opinions of our products and will be more likely to buy them. The campaign highlights Ford’s four key brand pillars: safety, quality, green technologies and smart technologies.

We believe that supporting causes that are important to our customers is a key way to show our commitment to social responsibility and strengthen our community ties. We emphasize this approach through the “Drive One 4 UR School” and “Drive 4 UR Community” campaigns, started in 2007 and 2012 respectively. Through these programs, participants test-drive a new Ford vehicle and help raise money for their local high school or local nonprofit organization. Ford donates up to $6,000 per event to fund school and nonprofit activities. These programs have been successful at both raising money for local organizations and raising consideration of Ford products. The programs have raised more $20 million for schools and nonprofit organizations since their inception. Feedback from participants shows that both purchase consideration and favorable opinion of the Ford brand improved after participating in the program.

Ford’s interaction with NBC and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon provide another example of our nontraditional marketing efforts. Mr. Fallon mentioned interest in purchasing a new truck during a broadcast, and Ford was first to respond to the call via Twitter. Mr. Fallon agreed that the F-150 King Ranch was the truck he wanted. Fallon then began a week-long contest to decide who he would buy the truck from featuring Ford sales consultants from Ford dealerships across the U.S. The winner of the contest earned the chance to sell Fallon the all new 2015 F-150. Leveraging digital and social communications in tandem with broadcast television, the programming achieved many viewer impressions. During one particular 60-minute period, the promotion garnered nearly 26 million impressions via Twitter alone. This prelaunch effort provided tremendous exposure for an upcoming product.

Traditional Advertising

Finally, we use traditional advertising to inform consumers about our products and our corporate performance. We use three primary advertising strategies: corporate-level communications about Ford Motor Company, advertising about our brands and specific products, and dealer-level product advertising. The goal of these advertising strategies is to sell vehicles. But just as important, we are aiming to increase general awareness about the excellence of our products and our corporate performance among people who are not yet in the market for a vehicle. To develop new products, we respond to market demands through our market research and product development efforts. Through our advertising, we hope to increase interest in and preference for our vehicles and our company, based on the excellence of our products and the positive actions of the company.

As part of our One Ford transformation, we are working to improve the effectiveness of our advertising communications by involving dealers more closely in the development of our advertising strategies. Dealers communicate with our customers every day, and they have special knowledge about consumers’ needs and wants. We included our dealers from the start in our Drive One campaign. In fact, prior to developing Drive One, we sought input from our entire Ford dealer body, and that feedback informed the campaign’s development. Together we arrived at a campaign that works at the corporate, brand, product and dealer levels.