Tag: Ford

Ford Follows Up, Gives Better ‘Focus’

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I blogged in an earlier post about a Ford PR event in Grand Rapids that didn’t seem to go too well. I subsequently followed up about how a Ford PR representative reached out to me and offered to visit campus.

That happened yesterday, when Dan Pierce, Environmental Communications Manager for Ford, and engineer Mike Tinskey, who manages Ford’s electric vehicle program, came to our Allendale campus with a prototype of the Ford Focus Electric and ample time to spend with some of our Advertising and PR students.

Pierce talked to students about internships at Ford in our student study, then spent some time outside with Tinskey talking to students about the vehicle. From 6-8:30, more than a dozen students took in a presentation about electric vehicle technology and Ford’s broad communications strategy with this emerging product category. The students did as much talking as Pierce and Tinskey.

Garret Ellison of the Grand Rapids Press was both outside and in the presentation. You can read his account. As for me, I’ll share just a few PR lessons learned in an event that happily lasted longer than I anticipated:

  • Ford recognizes the variance among publics and its “Power of Choice” campaign is designed to let consumers decide between battery only electric vehicle, plug-in hybrid, or gas-electric hybrid. 
  • Timeframe is important in PR campaigns. They acknowledge the need to reach early adopters and allow the popularity of electric vehicles to grow. They showed data and charts that illustrate slow initial growth that is starting to accelerate.
  • PR people have to think holistically. Pierce repeatedly pointed to Tinskey as an example of working with engineers and other internal publics. He also noted that the campaign needs to consider partnerships with companies that make charging equipment, addressing concerns of utility companies and government leaders and many other considerations beyond just sales pitch to consumers.
  • Messaging is important and must be tailored but sometimes a “shotgun” approach of multiple messages is necessary and strategic to reach diverse psychographic differences in a new product category.
  • This blogging thing can lead to great campus visits for students 🙂
The best part was hearing the students’ smart questions, hearing Pierce and Tinskey tell me how impressed they were with the students, and watching students show off their PR campaign plan books and resumes. Being taken by Tinskey for a short ride in the vehicle afterwards was pretty cool too. My ’99 internal combustion looks dated now.
In the end, I’d like to think Ford and the GVSU School of Communications have charged up a positive relationship.

Ford Friends Me

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My previous post “Fords Lost PR Focus” generated some attention from Ford. A Ford representative emailed me shortly after my post appeared asking to speak to me on the phone to clarify some things I alluded to about the Ford Focus event in downtown Grand Rapids.

I had thought the Ford PR team was on top of social media monitoring to respond to little ol’ me so quickly. But it turned out that a friend of mine who works in PR in Detroit, and used to work for Ford, forwarded my blog post to a VP there and it eventually got to Dan Pierce, the Global Environmental Communication Manager, who contacted me.

Chris Knape, meanwhile, told me no one from Ford had followed up as promised to answer his questions.

As Pierce explains it, the event was not intended to be a consumer event. The Ford Focus Electric is not out of production yet and they don’t want to offer consumer test drives until it is and they can make the right first impression. Those invited to the event were representatives of utilities, governmental units, and other early adopters such as hybrid owners who are interested in the concept and prototype before the release. While they didn’t stop Grand Valley students and others who happened by from looking, they did not have a drive-able car at this event. The consumer events will come later this year when the car is out of production.

As for Knape’s questions going unanswered, apparently there was one official spokesman at the event and that person was surrounded by TV and other media in the scrum that followed the official remarks. Still not good for first impressions to ignore the local business editor in any market in my opinion, but I’ll let you decide for yourself.

Meanwhile, the discussion I had with Pierce proved productive and a good example of PR fence mending. He’s offered to come to GVSU next month with a prototype car and an engineer to talk about it. Then he will address a group of PR students about promoting an all electric vehicle, sustainability and environmental communication. My students from last winter’s Fundamentals of PR courses are already getting out their plan books to show their own ideas on promoting the Ford Focus Electric to a college student market.

More to come.

Ford’s Lost PR Focus

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My Fundamentals of Public Relations students should have been consulted.

In several of our PR classes at GVSU, we take on “clients” for whom students do PR projects relevant to the class content. In upper level classes, these are clients in the community. In the fundamentals class I have usually taken on a client from an on-campus entity to keep the scale and target public simpler for this introductory level class.

But last winter, I was coming off  sabbatical and had not had a chance to recruit an on-campus client. So I took an idea from the newspaper and had students create a PR  campaign plan book that sought to persuade college students that the Ford Focus Electric set to debut  was a great concept and a car they should eventually buy.

The key word  there was  ‘eventually.’ My students themselves emphasized that, after doing research that showed a number of what we call ‘barriers to persuasion.’ Their peer students at GVSU and around the country had ‘range anxiety,’ or a fear of being unable to recharge when they needed to. They also wondered if the power would be adequate. Some felt that using electricity derived from coal wasn’t really “green” so what’s the point. Others were put off by the anticipated cost, mechanical upkeep, and other questions the students had to address in their communication tactics.

The campaign was complicated when Ford delayed the release of the Focus. So students smartly (with some of my counsel) focused the campaign on building brand and product category awareness and appreciation now for eventual purchase when the product is rolled out and when current college students have incomes that they can afford it.

My students came up with a variety of good ideas. Good in the sense that they were based on research and employed strategy grounded in theory. For example, the “diffusion of innovations” theory would indicate that “observability” and “trialability” are key when getting people to accept a new concept. So having students drive a Ford Focus around campus, and allowing other students to test drive it, was a popular strategy.

All of this came back when I read Grand Rapids Press Business Editor Chris Knape’s review of a Ford Focus PR event last week in downtown Grand Rapids. After some prepared remarks, the Focus event lost focus. Knape points out:

  • Ford representatives were unable to answer basic questions, like the natural objections my students had uncovered;
  • there was no actual vehicle to test drive, just a mock-up that Ford representatives cautioned GVSU students who attended to not touch;
  • Knape concludes the event “brought little new information to the market;”
I agree. I wouldn’t go so far as to call this Ford event a “stunt,” which implies sleight of hand or bait and switch to get people out. But it was  a poorly done PR event primarily because it seemed to favor image over substance. The value of events are exactly what Ford  was unprepared for–live and therefore more persuasive interaction with your publics, hands-on interaction of consumers with product. Apparently, the Ford  people were stunned that an event is not “controlled media.” I am in turn stunned by this. If any persuasion happened it is that the Ford Focus Electric should not be a consideration when young people buy a vehicle in the next few years.
My students would have been surprised too. Ford should have consulted with them. The wisest advice they could have given Ford would have been to do some research and have answers to common and reasonable questions as well as an actual product on hand. Otherwise, they should wait. 
The market won’t be ready for your product until your product (and your PR staff) is ready for market.