Insight
The Ford Mustang is an automotive icon. So when Ford celebrated the car’s half-century anniversary and announced it was coming to Europe for the first time in 50 years, this was a unique opportunity to turn a product launch into an historic occasion. So Blue Hive developed a mould-breaking media strategy and a social campaign that reached a crescendo at the 2014 UEFA Champions League Final: a unique event that started and ended with a referee’s whistle.
The background story is: new Mustang’s official European launch is 2015, but it was agreed to give 500 lucky customers the chance to own one ahead of the pack. So Blue Hive capitalised on the scarcity of these vehicles and created a huge piece of brand theatre around them. Yes, those 500 Mustangs could have discreetly shipped direct to avid buyers. But the agency saw a far greater opportunity, a chance to:
• Use the Mustang’s rarity to elevate the car’s desirability.
• Use this exclusivity to generate buzz, months ahead of the car’s official launch.
• Harness this buzz and convert it: establishing a pool of potential future buyers.
• Make the campaign an event, demonstrating Ford as an innovative, surprising and exciting brand, and a company capable of making sensational cars.
• Use social media to drive this campaign (results from the previous Mustang announcement campaign, in December 2013, proved this platform would engage the relevant audience).
• Fully leverage Ford’s last year of UEFA Champions League sponsorship and ensure the brand went out with a bang!
Strategy
The strategy was built on a powerful idea: Give Mustang fans a chance to reserve one of the first 500 cars bound for Europe: from an ‘online pop-up shop’ and during the 2014 UEFA Champions League Final. This bold approach involved selling cars a year ahead of their availability, without a price and to people who hadn’t yet seen or test driven the Mustang. The campaign also successfully defied many ‘best-practice’ conventions:
1. ‘Don’t invest at the end of a sponsorship deal…you don’t see long-term benefits.’ Blue Hive turned that view on its head, ensuring Ford left the UEFA Champions League on a high. The results, supercharged by social, prove the campaign created a positive effect Ford could capitalise on long into the future.
2. ‘Car launches require at least four weeks of heavyweight advertising to build awareness.’ Really? The multi-media campaign not only had social media at its heart, it was the spark that ignited the whole campaign.
3. ‘TV is the best launch media for a new car’ suggests the rulebook. Yet this campaign launched on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media platforms. And these were the consistent hook, used to target consumers throughout the campaign. The agency even set up an International Social Media Command Centre on the day of the Final. Staffed by community managers from around Europe, the central social team, plus staff from Google, Facebook and Twitter, Blue Hive fuelled buzz with posts and tweets before, during and after the match: reacting to events in real time.
Such a unique strategy required a rigorous approach to measurement tracking. So key KPIs were targeted and agreed around: increasing favourable brand perception; sales/reservation requests; and media metrics for key campaign components, including number of online video views, social engagements and visits to the microsite.
Execution
Digital and social media bound the online presale, filmic assets and social activation together. In social the lead content theme was #90minutes (what can be achieved in the length of a football match), but in total published over 1,500 pieces of content across 22 markets, all talking about Ford Mustang, #90minutes, or the online sale.
When Bill Ford sent Mustang on its symbolic journey from New York to Europe, engagement rates were high: the UK Facebook post and album registering a massive 21% CTR! Using this buzz as a springboard for Ford’s own social media blitz, Blue Hive engaged with existing Ford advocates and inspired celebrity Mustang fans to get involved via The Audience. The #90minutes drew Tweets from Robin Van Persie, Luis Figo, Bar Rafaeli and Lily Allen! The agency also created a Vine influencer programme that re-created iconic Mustang movie scenes in six seconds.
Ford clocked a huge number of online video views for its filmic assets through YouTube and other local video platforms. And in the days before the online sale, Facebook Reachblocks and YouTube mastheads were utilised to enhance the ‘Big Event’ feel. On the night of the game the Social Media Command Centre, staffed by community managers and key media owners, posted and amplified content in real time across Europe to a wider social media audience.
This unique campaign was executed with military precision: centrally created social media guidelines enabling 22 different markets to deliver consistency and excellence in activation.
Results
As the stats prove, the campaign greatly over-delivered against the key measures of success: to sell 500 Mustangs; generate a pool of potential future buyers and Ford brand advocates; and drive favourable opinion for Ford across Europe. In numbers:
• Sold all 500 Mustangs in 32 seconds.
• Took 9,736 orders, via our online pop-up shop, during the 105 minutes of the Final (including half-time).
• Clocked 508 million impressions on Facebook and Twitter, with 479,166 Likes, 57,871 Shares and 16,312 Comments.
• Gained 142,536 new Facebook fans.
• Gained 122,000 new Twitter followers.
• Increased followers to Ford Europe’s Vine channel by 1,100% in just 3 weeks.
• Drew 25,763,729 video views across the web, with over 5 million on YouTube.
• Created a huge database of hot prospects for Mustang’s official launch in 2015.
Footballers, musicians, film stars and other influencers helped spread the word on Twitter:
• #90minutes mentioned 11,000 times
• #FordMustang mentioned 14,500 times.