You know what I mean: it’s so bad, it’s good. And make no mistake about it: Ford’s fiestamovement.com is really bad. Garishly, gloriously, car-crash-by-the-side-of-the-road bad. We’re talking 100 pre-release Fiesta “agents” assigned reality TV show style missions by someone who smokes a large quantity of top shelf cannabis on a regular basis. “Take someone to the ocean who’s never been” [LSD optional?]; “Go to your favorite fast food joint order one of everything and give it away” [heads-up Ford: the days when McDonalds sold three items are well and truly over]; and “Blindfold a friend and take them away” [lawyer on speed dial]. It’s friggin’ endless. And the best/worst bit? ALL the agents blog. Twitter. YouTube. There hasn’t been such a surreal yet completely earnest multimedia agglomeration of [tangentially] auto-related inanity since, well, ever. I’m telling you: Ford has a major hit on its hands here.
You have to wonder if they’re making it super-campy on purpose.
BDB
I reckon it’s totally straight. Which why it’s so good.
Nothing more effective than preying on youthful ignorance. If only suicide could be made trendy….
Suicide is trendy in some places – luckily not some of the ones with the larger populations. But suicide can indeed become trendy and is then extremely hard to erradicate. :(
(fail to remember which ocuntry it is, where it went from zero to massive concern praqctically overnight and continued on for the next 40 years)
“Nothing more effective than preying on youthful ignorance. If only suicide could be made trendy….”
I’m in the target demographic of this campaign, and I resent that! Really most companies are cluless on “youth” marketing. Remember Sony’s dumbass “All I want for Christmas is my PSP” ‘viral’ marketing campaign? They actually thought the 16-30 demo was so stupid we wouldn’t realize it was, you know, not really viral but funded by the company.
All “Teh ToTallYY k00l x-TR33m l33t sp33k” they used on the “blog” kind of gave it away.
I just read that Knight Rider has been canceled.
Drat. I was pretty close to getting in on this, I would have loved to have a Fiesta free for 6 months. I wanted it pretty bad and got interviewed by the agency conducting the deal and everything (http://undercurrent.com/). Now when I go to the fiestamovement site I just get sad and jealous.
I hope it does gain traction, though, because I want there to be at least one competitive American branded subcompact. The Fiesta isn’t going to save Ford by any means, but by all accounts it’s a wonderful little car and can help improve Ford’s market perception.
If this works, the automotive Internet will truly take over the established print media folks.
But why Davey Johnson didn’t get a brown Fiesta is totally, absolutely beyond me.
I would have been happy if the ride and drive event they said was going to take place at the Omaha Zoo this past Sunday had actually happened. If they were there, they sure were hard to find, and the zoo people didn’t seem to know anything about it. Anybody else gone or tried to go to one of these?
A pretty cool marketing idea. They should add some kind of voyeur’s voting element to get viewers hooked on following the stories.
“If only suicide could be made trendy….”
Not at all funny, sick actually.
http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
It’s obnoxious, but I do like that all 100 cars are stick shift. I like the car, but that name. Why did they have to go with fiesta? I’m old enough to remember the original fiesta and that was a piece of crap on par with a yugo.
how about this for a mission,
drive around completely naked filming the reactions of toll booth operators, drive thrus, etc.
dolo54:
It’s been the Fiesta in Europe forever, and it’s even more appropriate since ours will be made in Mexico.
The thing you remember is the Korean-before-that-was-a-good-thing Festiva, which, while generally a piece of shit, could be good fun if a Taurus SHO engine was put behind the front seats.
If Ford can put together a great Fiesta for the US market, then they can be as silly as they want to be. They won’t have a problem selling as many Fiestas as the Mexican factory can build.
Mission number 7:
Sit in your designed in Europe, made in Mexico car and contemplate the future of the US when your highest aspiration is to have the most losers follow your crappy blog/vlog/social networking site/tweets about the staged ironic hipster shit that you fill your life with.
Mission number 8:
(Women only) Pose next to your Fiesta flashing your tits, post it on Fiestamovement.com so that Fiestamovement.com has something at all worth viewing.
Mission number 9:
Get off my lawn you damn kids.
Alison H from Jersey is pretty cute, but Brittney Taylor is far more interesting. A little quirky maybe but interesting. Brittany wants us to tell her what she should do in her car. Ideas>?
Hate the color of green they came up with, teal looks better
Mission 10: turn key to start car
I was wondering how it was I saw a seriously-green hatchback version of this car driving down near the Boston Common/Charles street last week, way before it has been actually released.
FWIW, it was a seriously sharp looking whip. I sure hope it sells well for Ford.
What the hell is that orange thing Alison H. has on her chopsticks?
superbadd75:
I’m pretty sure it’s a chicken head. Make sure that your chicken head has been cooked properly or you may have a fiesta movement.
Since these cars are made in europe, any reports on the actual reliability and build quality won’t apply to the Hecho en Mexico versions we’ll be getting (US and Canada). I had a Ford Escort GT that was made in mexico (once upon a time), and it was complete crap… the only good part in it was the Japanese (Mazda) 1.8L motor!
Actually, a friend of mine goes to church (Unitarian, natch) with one of these “agents.” The friend is looking to replace his ancient VW Golf with a new car in the next few months. After learning about the Fiesta through her he’s now strongly considering a buying one when it comes to market in the U.S. It’s a car that never would have hit his radar absent her influence. (He’s not a car guy and TiVo’s his way past the only other thing that might have caught his attention – car commercials on television.) So mock though we might, perhaps the program actually works.
Crazy Canuck–
The Fusion is made in Mexico, and does just fine in reliability and quality.
@BDB
Well, this was a 1991 model, so I should hope it would have improved in the intervening 18 years or so.. maybe ford cut back on the cervezas at lunchtime and cracked the whip a bit. I still have nightmares about that escort thought..
Crazy Canuck–
My parents gave me their ’88 Tempo (in 2001) to drive my last few years of high school, so you have my sympathy.
It’s obnoxious, but I do like that all 100 cars are stick shift. I like the car, but that name. Why did they have to go with fiesta? I’m old enough to remember the original fiesta and that was a piece of crap on par with a yugo.
People who remember the original Fiesta are probably the people who are not Ford’s target demographic for this car.
Some of those missions I wouldn’t mind doing myself. Travelling up or down the entire west coast, drive until I run out of gas, recreate a road scene from “Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas” That one would rock, especially since every time I drive through Delaware, I have this inexplicable urge to blurt out, “Wait!!! We can’t stop here, this is Biden Country!!!”
Fiesta Movement or Bowel Movement?
This contrived “youth-oriented” commercial is annoying.
Perhaps I’m too old at thirty-six.
In order to sell this car in US they have to offer it here. Why is this so painful for them? Bring in Festiva and Aveo and fail and blame that people don’t like small cars?
On the other hand, I don’t envy them their job changing perceptions of American mass market who are understood to think diesels are bad and SUVs are safe and suffer from wide variety of future shock.
I refuse to invest any more time in their site, having looked for 45 seconds.
Sajeev Mehta
that’s awesome, Bob Mould is a friend of mine
If this works, the automotive Internet will truly take over the established print media folks.
But why Davey Johnson didn’t get a brown Fiesta is totally, absolutely beyond me.
1. I want that soundtrack he used.
2. If I ever buy a Fiesta, I’m painting it Cop Car Brown
I didn’t know Alison Haislip was a chickenhead!?!!
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chickenhead
She’s cute, I’ll give her that. But cute or not, I have no patience for video clips at this time, so I skipped it.
And yes, that’s like a “Gummy Chicken Head”. Is there some sort of inside joke I missed out on?
And one other thing. Jokes, quips, and snide comments about suicide are not cool. Back around 1989-90, a friend of mine committed suicide. It was a heartbreaking time in my life and my other friends’ lives, because we all knew this guy. Even now I still wonder what might have been.
So please make a special note-to-self: Joking about, making snide comments about, or issuing so-called facetious wishes for somebody to do this are on the all-caps NOT COOL / NOT FUNNY scale.
I’m just sayin’…
Anyone remember when Mickey D’s were test marketing (I think in Virginia) buckets o’ chicken, and a lady went on local TV after pulling out a breaded, deep-fried McChicken Head?
KFC breathed a sigh of relief.
All of the panache that the Focus lacks, the Fiesta has… in spades. If they had offered it last year, I would likely not own an Elantra now.
The Fiesta will probably flop just like the Astra did at Saturn. This campaign is just as lamn as Saturn’s kiss and Astra.
We all know after a year on the US market only 25,000 Fiestas will find buyers.
The day after I eat Taco Bell I have my very own Fiesta Movement.
At the end of the day however the important thing is that Ford is engaging in some very out there viral marketing that is getting at least some young people to pay attention. Ford has probably figured out that the mid life baby boomers have too much import penis in their mouths to ever consider a domestic and that they’d better ’em while they’re young.