#SMWLA Preview: How The Ford Fiesta Movement Is Rethinking Branding

From September 23-28, online companies, executives, and personalities will gather in Santa Monica for Social Media Week Los Angeles. To help showcase the incredible events that will be going down this year, Tubefilter will be offering daily previews of individual events. Check out the full schedule here and our schedule at a glance here.

The Ford Fiesta Movement is here, and it’s trying to change the way brands think about engaging fans through social media. Instead of using creators as mouthpieces for canned blocks of corporate text, Ford is letting creators give the pitches most meaningful to them. The result has been some of the most fun brand videos we’ve seen recently on YouTube.

At Social Media Week Los Angeles, Ford’s Global Digital & Multimedia Communications Manager, Scott Monty, will discuss his company’s online media strategy alongside a handful of the creators Ford has empowered. Panelists include Alex Carpenter

, Bridget O’Neill, and Hank Chen; we can expect to her them offer the reasons why Ford’s strategy is a positive for individual endorsers, not just the big brand.

What does Ford hope to accomplish? Essentially, it’s all about engagement. Large scale campaigns can roll up the ‘likes’ counter, but it means little unless they are actually connecting to the consumers they hope to reach. Ford, instead, wants its viewers actually support the brand message instead of just clicking a button, and that philosophy has the potential to be a powerful marketing tool.

The ‘It’s About Engagement’ panel will go down on Friday, September 27th at 10:30 AM at ROC Santa Monica. If you’re interested, you can sign up right here.