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Ford Fiesta: Will the Music Make the Brand?

Ford is dedicating a lot of resources to engage consumers and to introduce the Fiesta in the United States. The car has been available in Europe for years. But when Ford decided to launch it stateside, the automaker was flooded with four thousand applications to become Ford Fiesta ‘agents’. Only 100 were selected for the Fiesta Movement to drive the car for six months and document their experiences. Ford provided each agent with a gas card to help offset some of the expenses.

Meanwhile, we will begin seeing television commercials promoting the new Ford Fiesta. When the commercials debut, the music will play a big part in establishing the Ford Fiesta brand. But will music help make the emotional connection with consumers?

Music Makes the Brand

MarketingProfs, a resource for entrepreneurs, small businesses and marketers, published an article in December that documented research on the importance of music in commercials to help define the brand. In the article, Ruth Simmons referenced a research study from the 1990’s which found that ‘consumers are 24% more likely to buy a product with music that they recall, like and fits the brand compared with 8% where the opposite applies.’

As a result, marketers are evaluating how the music of the brand connects and resonates with consumers. So, that becomes a tall order for accomplished musicians like LaShawn Gary of Chicago who was tapped by Ford to write a commercial jingle for the Fiesta.

Developing the Music Asset

Mr. Gary says he is honored to be selected to provide music for consideration by Ford marketers. A native of Detroit, he has several family members who have worked for the automaker. He studied music at Southern University in Louisiana, earning his undergrad and went on to pursue a Masters degree. Mr. Gary works as an educator in Chicago Public Schools, teaching music which is his first love. In his 17 year career, he has arranged and written commercial jingles for brands like Crest and Suave and collaborated with the legendary Four Tops on an arrangement for Happy’s Pizza.

After test-driving the Ford Fiesta, Mr. Gary stepped into his recording studio and began looking for sounds that represented what he felt when he drove the car. He thought about driving his Ford Fiesta along Chicago’s scenic Lake Shore Drive and from that came a nice urban beat.

Brian Hendrix is a product development engineer with Ford who is working with Mr. Gary on the creative process. “LaShawn was selected based on his proven musical ability and track record for completing projects,” he said. When Mr. Hendrix came to Chicago, he learned about a second jingle – a vibe that represents the emotional connection Mr. Gary drew upon as a father and husband.

According to Mr. Hendrix, the videos will circulate on Ford’s internal website, along with a longer version of each that captures Mr. Gary’s thoughts and motivations.

The Ford Fiesta Music Brand

Mr. Gary is among many musicians chosen to provide arrangements for the Ford Fiesta. Marketers at the automaker will undoubtedly review each arrangement and ask, “What does the Ford Fiesta Brand sound like?”

Given all the resources Ford has already dedicated to the Fiesta, the decision to get the right music is just as important as making sure the right images and messaging are conveyed to consumers. But as Ms. Simmons writes in MarketingProfs, “The time has come to let music play a real role in a brand’s equity.”

TaylorYou is written and managed by Cathy Y. Taylor, managing director for Vocii, LLC a brand consultancy that focuses on filling the gap between human resources, marketing and communications to align employee behaviors with company strategies. The Vocii mission is to help companies engage employees and customers in conversations that help to build long-term trust in the organizational brand.

Creating a Customer Experience

What does it take to write a commercial jingle for a car that’s not on the road yet?

Find out Monday when TaylorYou talks with an accomplished musician who is sharing his talents with the Ford Motor Company.

LinkedIn Success Stories

I received a lot of feedback to a recent blog post entitled ‘LinkedIn Maintains its Place in Social Networking’ after distributing the link on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. One of the questions I raised in the earlier post was whether anyone had ever leveraged LinkedIn to get a job or land a business opportunity.

A LinkedIn success story

Of all the comments regarding preferences and uses of LinkedIn, Barbara Maldonado responded on Twitter that LinkedIn was the key to landing her current job as business development director for Marketing Resources Incorporated near Chicago.

Barbara Maldonado is a LinkedIn advocate

Ms. Maldonado describes herself as a ‘gigantic advocate’ for LinkedIn. Her original strategy was to participate in group discussions. As group members posed questions instead of offering a self-promoting response, Ms. Maldonado says she would provide answers based on her knowledge or expertise of the subject matter. “Answering the question shows thought leadership,” said Ms. Maldonado.

When Ms. Maldonado found herself unemployed in December 2008 due to a layoff, she used her LinkedIn status update to promote herself to potential hiring managers. It didn’t take long for someone in one of the groups she had participated in to notice that Ms. Maldonado was unemployed. There was an exchange of information which led to her resume being passed along to the hiring manager. Three months later, Ms. Maldonado had a new job.

Ms. Maldonado says LinkedIn is a wonderful tool for reputation management. She remains visible and active in discussion groups and integrates LinkedIn with her presence on Twitter. It has worked to her advantage as she is being sought out by high-level marketing executives to connect on LinkedIn. Ms. Maldonado also uses LinkedIn as a credibility check by including a link to her profile in her email communications. “I want people to access my profile and know that I am serious about doing business with them,” she said.

How to leverage LinkedIn

Ms. Maldonado’s story is an illustration that LinkedIn is one of many strategic methods to gaining new employment, especially in a market where job candidates are seeking to break through the clutter to get noticed.

Social media expert Nathan Kievman, wrote an e-book about how to make the best use of LinkedIn to advance your career. Mr. Kievman offers five strategies to get noticed and strengthen your expert status:

Own (or start) a LinkedIn group
Create and share high quality valuable resources – post links to a blog or resources, videos, white papers that will be of value to LinkedIn users
Post relevant news topics – post links to a blog or news articles, again that create value to users
Post answers to questions – be brief, compelling, relevant and professional
Create engagement and conversation – build trust through open communication

Reputation management and personal branding will become increasingly more relevant in 2010. LinkedIn is perhaps one of many channels to consider as a way to add value, help others, engage others and connect with others.

LinkedIn Maintains its Place in Social Networking

I have to admit, when I first created a profile on LinkedIn six years ago, I suspected it was something different. It was my first experience with ‘social networking’ even though it wasn’t referred to as such in 2004. Instead it was labeled a professional networking site.

Then along came Facebook, MySpace and all the others but none seemed to be a threat to LinkedIn because it had carved out a specific niche.

Until Facebook grew up and became a destination for Boomers to reconnect with long lost friends, high school buddies, college classmates – and yes – connections with potential employers.

So, it wasn’t surprising when I read the Wall Street Journal article about how leaders at LinkedIn are positioning the site to compete with Facebook in terms of stickiness – or better put – the amount of time visitors spend on the site. And let’s face it if you have a LinkedIn profile and you’re active on Facebook, you know how much time you’re spending on each site. Something like 13 minutes on LinkedIn vs. 213 minutes on Facebook, according to third-party research.

However, it doesn’t take much to figure out that some of the functionality available on Facebook is slowly making its way to LinkedIn, which threatens to disrupt the professionalism of LinkedIn’s character. Hardly anyone ever updated their status on LinkedIn the same way they do on Facebook until recently. And now with the integration of Twitter, users can tweet a LinkedIn status update seamlessly.

But with all of the practical and professional uses of LinkedIn, I want to explore some aspects of the site with the following questions:

1. Do LinkedIn users want to interface with professional connections the same as they do with friends on Facebook?

The answer to this question is obvious as there is a difference between professional contacts and friends. And the comments to the WSJ article bear that out. Most people believe LinkedIn should remain a ‘business networking tool’ while others commented that connections on LinkedIn are not the same as friends on Facebook.

There was a subsequent discussion recently in the Social Media Today group on LinkedIn started by blogger J. Paul Duplantis regarding the proper etiquette in ‘friending’ someone on LinkedIn. In three days the topic drew over 98 comments (and counting), including mine, on what is perceived as the proper way to accept or reject a request to ‘join my network.’ Reading some of the responses it was clear that the differentiation between Facebook and LinkedIn is starting to blur a little bit when it comes to building connections.

2. How do you make effective use of LinkedIn for business?

For those using LinkedIn to source business contacts, there is a new feature called Faceted Search, which allows you to refine or drill down when searching for people based on specific ‘facets.’ Bottom line, you get a much more relevant search using this functionality.

3. Has anyone ever landed a job or an awesome business deal through LinkedIn?

The answer to this question is really a demonstration of LinkedIn’s value in professional online networking. In light of some of the improvements that are being added to LinkedIn, there are a number of professionals like myself who are taking a second look at LinkedIn as a viable option. And let’s not forget the hundreds of consultants who are doing training sessions on how to make better use of LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is not Facebook. It’s not MySpace and it’s certainly not Twitter. To paraphrase former Arizona Cardinals coach Dennis Green: LinkedIn is what we thought it was…a social networking tool for professionals.

The last and final question: Is LinkedIn a valuable resource to you? Why or why not?

The Upside of Cultural Change

“There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in traveling in a stagecoach, that it often a comfort to shift one’s position and be bruised in a new place.”

-Washington Irving, Tales of a Traveler (1824)

Several days ago, I did a blog post on the cultural changes taking place at General Motors. It was based on something as simple as a dress code policy in which employees in the corporate office can wear jeans to work. I gave a lot of credit to former GM CEO Fritz Henderson, who by all media accounts, seemed to be the agent for change that GM needed to emerge from the brink of disaster. One day later, news came that Henderson resigned, presumably because the changes he implemented were not happening fast enough for the GM board of directors.

GM officials won’t share specifics about the board’s displeasure with Henderson but now chairman/CEO Ed Whitacre is on record as saying he is working to remove the long-standing walls of bureaucracy in GM and empowering employees to usher in culture change. Whitacre told the New York Times, “I want to make sure people understand that the responsibility for this company to be successful is not just with the C.E.O. It’s them.”

Change is not easy

In this new economy change is not easy but it’s necessary to survive. As an example, both General Motors and Ford are launching new initiatives to increase small car sales to consumers. Ford has hired a social media strategist to help connect buyers to online efforts. GM is training its sales force to speed up response times to online shoppers. And GM is also taking what appears to be a page out of the Wal Mart playbook by hiring receptionists to greet potential car buyers in place of a salesman.

These are small cultural shifts that could obviously have some impact on customer engagement. However, the strength in any company transformation lies in employee engagement.

Measuring the impact of change

With all of the work companies are putting into cultural change and brand strategy, what if there was a way to align the employee behaviors to the company strategies? There are unique opportunities to truly bring company strategies to life rather than have them reside on paper only.

Most company leaders recognize they cannot deploy the same change initiatives that were used in the past. Social networking tools have ripped the cover off and exposed weaknesses that leaders have been trying to hide for years. As a way of shoring up these weaknesses, companies can engage workers in meaningful dialogue and collaboration to discover solutions to these problems. Put a social media policy in place and train workers on how to be brand ambassadors on networking sites. This is a strategic approach to enabling employees to join the conversation on Twitter, Facebook and other sites and drive customer engagement.

It’s a Team Effort

Identifying and communicating the core values of the company in conjunction with the change management can be reinforced through performance management tools that connect brand behaviors to each core value. The beauty of this begins to take shape when management takes a more active role in employee engagement instead of leaving it solely to human resources. The key, though, is taking action on issues that are brought to the attention of management.

Working as a team to improve communications between the C-suite, managers and employees is a crucial part of culture change. Experts say top leaders must break down barriers and bureaucracy to connect with lower-level employees to develop what’s called, ‘listening downwards.’ Employee behavior tools allow for that to happen because employees are engaged with each other, managers and ultimately company leaders. Connect these behaviors to corporate strategies and align it with customer engagement and the team is strengthen to take on the competition.

Is your company experiencing a culture change? How would you assess the ability of leadership to drive the change?

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