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Ford Motors Needs A Zipcar
Only A Matter Of Time
Ford Motors is going out of business, and they haven’t
changed direction enough to prove otherwise. Maybe they’ve
slowed their speed, but they’re still headed off
the cliff.
It was a great move to dump Billy Ford from the helm
of the ship, but other than that, what has Ford truly
done? Where are the Bold Moves?
Ford needs to completely reintroduce itself to America.
The current stage consists of lecture-based, push-only
methods, such as costly television commercials. If ever
there were a giant corporation in need of experiential
marketing and consumer dialog, Ford is it.
Any car salesman will tell you that one of their biggest
goals is to get a potential buyer to sit in a car. Once
that’s done, significant headway can be made towards
making a sale. Likewise, Ford should be out on the streets
not just getting people into their vehicles, but driving
them. With a marketing budget in the billions , doing
this is probably not only more cost efficient, but easier
to manage.
Enter ideas like Zipcar.
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| Zipcars are
attractive, and offer a positive brand experience.
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Run With The Good Ideas
Zipcar is a company that offers the ability to rent
cars (through memberships) to people by the day, or
even by the hour. It’s designed to make cars very
accessible to those that live in urban areas where owning
a car is expensive, and reliable parking near impossible.
Being the company that provides the fleet, much like
GM did with Avis in 1979, is a great experiential marketing
technique to get people to experience the vehicles.
But Zipcar isn’t a great fit. The brand caters
to those who can’t afford cars, or don’t
really need to own them. Likewise, Zipcar is constantly
trying to be environmentally friendly, and Ford has
been terrible in providing the hybrids and alternative
fuel cars they suggested they’d have available
by now back in their corporate social responsibility
document of 1999 . Traditional rental companies are
also seeing a value in this market, and as of April
2007, Hertz is offering hourly car rentals in limited
areas.
What Ford needs to do is move into this market quickly,
and not as a partner to a Zipcar or Hertz. Ford needs
to target customers who can afford cars and trucks.
This is why Ford should create new partnerships with
companies like Lowe’s and Home Depot. People shopping
at these stores are property owners, and often have
at least two cars per household. Imagine if Ford had
a short-term car rental option at Home Depot, where
someone could show up, buy plenty of sheet rock, rent
a new Ford F-150 pickup truck for 45 minutes, and go
back to Home Depot and drive home in their own car.
Zipcar and Hertz are charging about $12 per hour, but
Ford could charge only a few dollars because it’s
a marketing expense, not a for-profit side company.
After all, people want to know how their vehicle will
fit into their lives, such as how well it can move sheet
rock. Customers are never going to pull a trailer of
weights up a colossal seesaw, nor will they regularly
race to the edge of a canyon.
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| The Ford
GT is gorgeous, and precisely what Americans haven't
been asking Ford to build. |
Actually Being Bold
Even though there are many other ways to lessen the
costs of such a venture (such as having dealerships
sponsor specific vehicles or locations), the point is
Ford should be making bold moves by investing in them,
not being afraid of them. With billions spent every
year the price tag for something like this is minimal.
Last year Zipcar doubled it’s fleet and services
with only a $20 million dollar investment. To Ford (a
company that drops more than that in Superbowl commercials
for one day out of the year) this is a no-brainer.
Then again, when Americans were begging for hybrid
models of their vehicles, Ford decided to release the
GT; a $150,000 gas guzzling sports car that could go
just about four times the legal speed limit in most
states in America.
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