Executive Summary Ford Focus is the UK’s best-‐selling small family car. Despite industry growth, Focus’s segment was shrinking, provoking aggressive marketing tactics from competitors. Ford needed to launch the Focus in a unique and innovative manner to maintain leadership. Partnering with the Metro, Mindshare created WARP a digital magazine exploring the future of tech. WARP’S mobile/tablet lead strategy resonated with the target audiences’ primary interest and differentiating them from competitors. Background and objectives Focus has the highest share C segment market. While the C segment has increased in units overall, it is not keeping up with the market as a whole; the C segment only grew 7% during 2013, compared with 11% market growth for the overall automotive industry. As a result competition within the C segment was fierce with little differentiation between messaging. In order to overcome this Ford needed to build a desire around the new Focus, amplify the car’s style and cutting edge technological features (in line with the client brief) and do this in a way that’s innovative and unlike any competitor activity. For this launch, rather than planning a standard print or display campaign we recognised that Ford needed to work with a partner to create content, which allowed them to connect with their target audience (Lorenzo) and build favourable opinion around the car, it’s features and tech. Ford also tasked us to ensure that the response was an inventive, adaptive and digitally-‐lead content solution, however didn’t have any content to promote themselves. In addition to this, from sign off, Ford required activity to be turned around within 2 weeks meaning that time was against us. Business objective: Maintain market leadership in C segment. Marketing Objective: Increase favourable opinion (thus consideration) by building an emotional connection with the nameplate. Role for Comms: Launch and define the New Focus through amplification of its style and cutting edge technology features. Research also showed that along with various other topics, technology was a key passion for the target audience, presenting an opportunity to amplify the new technology features of the Focus. Insight It was evident from the brief that Lorenzo was digitally savvy being 62% more likely to access the internet through a tablet and 24% more likely to access the internet via their mobile than the average online user (TGI, 2014) presenting a key opportunity for a tablet/mobile lead strategy.
The plan Taking the above research into account Mindshare partnered with the Metro to launch WARP an exclusive four-‐part digital only magazine, available across mobile and tablet, which brings you the future, now. WARP was automatically downloaded, within the Metro app, along with your Friday digital edition of the Metro. With everything from 3D printing human ears to predicting what ‘Back to the Future II Got Right’, the digital magazine was packed with need-‐to-‐know technology and innovation. Each edition also featured a Focus specific article looking at the innovative technology from the new car and how it changed a user’s driving experience. In addition to this, WARP also featured a hidden section called Flip, powered by accelerometer technology, where users could physically flip their tablet or mobile device to unlock additional historical content looking at innovations that changed the way we live, linking the second creative territory. While the new Ford Focus is packed with smart, useful technology to ‘make you go further’, this partnership established Focus as a leader in the tech space, meeting the role for comms, tapping into one of Lorenzo’s passion points and achieving Ford’s ambition to employ a mobile first media strategy. It is important to note that Mindshare, Blue Hive and the Metro team worked collaboratively around the clock to produce WARP, a completely bespoke product that is a first for both a traditional print partner and a market-‐leading motoring brand. Each week new editorial articles had to be written, shot, approved and set live allowing for only 4 working days for content to be produced. To promote WARP, display ads ran across mobile, tablet, email and print amplifying the magazine in association with the New Focus launch. Results WARP attracted over 22,000 users each week, with over 35,000 users reading the magazine on the first week of launch. Overall throughout the 4 week campaign period the activity reached 54,808 unique browsers, illustrating that the same users were re-‐visiting the content on a weekly basis demonstrating its engagement. It was also evident that users were keen to read the entire magazine, rather than snacking on the content, with a total of 2.4 million page views across all editions and devices. In order to allow us to measure success against the business and marketing objective a study was conducted by 3rd party research company focusing on 1,200 Metro readers, key study take outs showed:
• 79% uplift in favourable opinion of the new Focus
• 86% uplift in associating Focus as innovative
• 90% uplift in associating Focus with cutting-‐edge technology
• 38% of respondents who had been exposed to WARP, or WARP promotion, stated they took some sort of action as a result of the activity, including searching for more information on the new Ford Focus, talking about the content and visiting the website
• 46% of all respondents who recalled the ad also stated they would consider a Ford Focus for their next car
purchase Client view “The mobile first strategy of WARP meant Digital was core to this important campaign. Ford has always embraced innovative ideas / technology and WARP was a great opportunity to try something new, differentiating us from others in the market – especially important for the Focus launch. WARP was also well received internally and we were extremely pleased to be involved in such an exciting piece of work.” Rachel Moore: Media & Fixed Marketing Manager for Ford UK
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