Came across a great blog post today from Mark Widawer. The kind of post that made me think “Gee, I wish I’d written that!”
Anyway, it’s titled “Bad Advertising – Ford Needs To ‘Learn One'” and it’s all about the latest strategic marketing campaign just announced by the Ford Motor Company in North America (I hope for Ford’s sake they don’t use it elsewhere).
Now, I’ll make a confession here. I actually have a bit of a soft spot for Ford. Near where I grew up in the UK there was a big Ford assembly plant and the company was a big employer in the area (Ford Europe HQ was nearby as well). The classic Ford Cortina and then the Escort XR3 (not to mention the Capri Ghia 3.0) were all objects of desire for me at one time or another.
And although I might be opening myself to some ridicule, I think the current Ford Focus is just an excellent car.
However, what is it with big car companies today that makes them so utterly clueless when it comes to marketing? In his article, Mark Widawer reports on Ford’s latest “Big Idea” that is supposed to get dealers and customers excited and the sales rolling in.
It’s (drum roll)…”Ford: Drive One”!
Er…quite. A classic example of image advertising at it’s worst! Anyway, read the whole thing. Mark makes some excellent points and has some interesting suggestions as to what Ford could do as an alternative.
Big car companies are a seemingly endless source of marketing case studies. Ford, of course, will never live down the fiasco of the Edsel. General Motors wrote the book on market segmentation (niche marketing before people even know what niche marketing was!) before forgetting everything they knew and becoming an abject example in how not to run a car company (or any kind of company, for that matter).
As an aside, Mark Widawer is quite an expert on traffic and conversion. He has a number of excellent products out including “Landing Page Cash Machine”. If you need to get up to speed on landing pages, I can recommend that particular program.