Weirdness from the Fiesta Movement

Hey Kyle,

You are right on point. Ford owes an explanation for the following reasons:
1. People used their free time to participate in Ford’s contest, providing them with outbound marketing spreading awareness of Ford’s Fiesta brand to their personal contacts for free.
2. Ford decided on the rules and deadlines, creating expectations from the participants. Yet, they can’t follow through on their promises
3. The lack of updates from their team, other than Sam tweeting that he and crew were getting all “hopped up on Monster energy drinks” (which, I wish he would have provided full disclosure as to if they bought them, or if Monster gave them to them for the free mention), is very disappointing.
4. We know from the Chapter 1 movement, that Ford has been a bit misleading to the exact “openness” of the competition – in the first Chapter, they actually encouraged certain bloggers to apply, and ironically, those people were among their final selected group. Is this delay because Ford is holding out for other entries still?
5. Ford’s silence only creates additional Twitter chatter from the applicants, helping them get more #fordfiesta and #fiestamovement posts.

With social media, its immediateness is rewarding, but if Ford keeps the silent treatment going much longer, they run the risk of really alienating those applicants that are still waiting for word. And, with the number of talented individuals that applied, an anti-fiestamovement movement could be right around the corner.

Hopefully, they can get it together and start acting like professionals that use social media to communicate information to their followers.

In the meantime, as I wait to decide the direction I’ll take with the two domains we have (www.2011Fiesta.com and http://www.iwantafieta.com) the possibility remains that they could be used as a great showcase for other company’s small car offerings. Thanks to the Fiesta Movement, it would get a lot of hits without having to do much promoting.

Okay, before I say anything else, I will be choosing my words in this response *very* carefully. Partially because of professionalism and also because there is a good chance that people from Ford will be reading this. Next, I would like to ask others to do the same. Since I am human, I got caught up in a lot of the emotional anxiousness of this past week as well, but I realized that I needed to not make rash comments that could hurt me in this movement or in anything else.

That being said, I have experienced almost the exact same timeline as you. Pushed my vid up late Sunday, submitted application late Monday night, got a call first thing Wednesday morning. Little communication since. Now, I’ve tried not to push Ford or the marketing company and only sent Sam a single DM (to which he apologized for the lack of communication and hinted that not all agents were picked) and shortly thereafter saw a tweet by Scott that they were finalizing selections.

Today, I had resolved to call my contact at the marketing partner. When I threw my hat in the ring with the “me too”, I had already spoken with him. I purposely did not say anything about my conversation because I did not want to cause everyone else to start calling them and getting inundated. Without going into full detail of the call, I was able to confirm that EVERYONE will get a call one way or the other and that Ford is still deliberating on final picks. I got a couple of my questions answered and did also tip them off to the fact that several hopeful agents have gotten very anxious over the lack of communication.

In summary, I would hope that everyone can be patient just a bit longer. Yes, it sucks that the website hasn’t been update and we’ve been in limbo for over a week, but we need to be careful with what we say (I learned this lesson the hard way last year). I think the danger is more in this comment area than the blog. Some of the things I read in the first comment were things I agreed with internally, but would never write publicly for fear that Ford would read them and disqualify me. I also wouldn’t worry about dates and such for updating websites. Those are always subject to change.

Hope this helps. If you get nothing else that I said, just remember to relax and be careful what you say publicly.

[ Aaron ]

Well, I’m glad that most people agree with my very first comment posted in regards to Kyle’s post. I’m sorry that most of you feel that you have to “hold your tongue” for fear of being excluded from being a Fiesta Movement Agent.

However, it is just a competition, regardless of how interesting or high-profile it is. And even thought the chances of winning two new Fiestas (1 in 20) are great, the fact remains that just a communication from Ford to the Movement’s hopefuls here and there would eliminate all of this frustration, anxiety, and now, annoyance, that a lot of us are now experiencing.

A 140-character Tweet takes all of 40 seconds to do. Given that fact, they’ve had 15,120 opportunities over the past seven days to communicate back to the larger audience (7 days x 24 hours x 60 minutes x 60 seconds / 1 :40 second Tweet = 15,120 chances). Sam’s Tweeted more about the #monsterenergy drinks they are putting down in that time period.

Nonetheless, I’ll remain patient and wait for the news and not go overboard and do anything radical. LOL. Forums, like this thread, can be used by companies to find out what people are saying, which they can use to learn from and improve on the next time around. Hopefully if they read this, they’ll make a note to themselves about the importance of ongoing communication.

Great summary article though. And, interesting that you posted a pic of you in a foreign sports car rather than something made by Ford. Hopefully they don’t “ding” you for that!

I’ve also submitting an application and am patiently waiting. I guess that is all we can do at this point. We may all very well get calls today, who knows? I’ve always been “the glass is half full” type of person, so although I’m super anxious, I’m am very excited and hopeful about this opportunity. A 3 week wait for a once in a lifetime opportunity doesn’t seem like such a bad trade off.

So guys keep the faith. I’m rooting for each and everyone of us!