A follow-up to Ford’s Social Media experiment [VIDEO]

Yesterday I wrote a post here about a social media experiment being run by Ford to publicize their new Fiesta car launching in 2010. In the post I suggested that this was a rather bold experiment on Ford’s part as they will have no control over the content being publish to the web by the 100 winners of the contest they ran to select the people they will let have a Fiesta for six months.

The one hundred people were selected based on two scores which Ford referred to as a social vibrancy rating which is based on how much the applicant was followed online and across how many platforms. this was combined with and over all grade on creativity, video skills and their ability to hook a viewer within the first five to ten seconds.

Ford has agreed on a hands off approach once the keys are handed over to the selected people. It will have no control of what is being put online. This could be dangerous for Ford should there be any negative opinions about the car but that appears to be a chance they are willing to take.

Allen Stern from CenterNetworks took a little bit of an exception to the experiment being run by Ford likening it to pay-for-post type of marketing. His concerns were addressed in the comments of the post by Scott Monty the gentleman in charge of the Fiesta Movement social media experiment and today Allen posted an interview with Scott that further addressed his concerns. I have embedded the video Allen posted here for you to have a listen to.

A big hat tip to Allen for going one step further and providing us with a good interview with Scott and some additional background about Ford’s move into social media.