The Death of Conventional Media Has Been Indefinitely Postponed
When I first heard about Ford’s Fiesta Movement, I heard it like this. "Ford is giving away 100 Fiestas to prominent social media people, with no other requirements about what they do with them."
And, as soon as I heard this, I had two thoughts:
1. Holy moly, this is the end of conventional media! If they’re picking really prominent people–ones with tens of thousands of followers, or networks that number in the hundreds of thousands or even millions–the game is over. By the time the mainstream press gets ahold of these cars, the opinion will already be set by the buzz in social media. And, assuming the Fiesta is a $15,000 car loaded, this whole stunt cost them only $1.5 million, or about 1/2 of a superbowl ad, or 1/100 of the new Camry launch budget.
2. Holy moly, is this the beginning of monetized attention and social currency, as I predicted in my Interzone 220 story, "Monetized?" And, if so, does this mean prominent social media folks will begin to receive boatloads of free stuff in the hope they’ll review it, from cars to detergent? And if that’s the case, is this really a sustainable model?
Of course, that’s when I dug a little deeper and found out that Ford didn’t really give away the cars. They’re loaning them for 6 months. And they’re not giving them only to hand-picked, mega-socially-connected attention-behemoths, they’re giving them to normal people who applied to be part of the program. And those people will even be expected to do "assignments" with the cars, one per month, for 6 months.
All in all, a much better thought-out program than simply giving the cars away. It avoids the cries of "bribery!" It forestalls the avalanche of free products on every prominent social media person in the world. It preserves some semblance of taste and order. And it may still have a significant impact on the car’s perception in the mainstream.
But I can’t help thinking, "Wouldn’t it have been even more fun if they’d simply given the cars away?"
