Ford To Keep Marketing Spend, Increase Digital

[Frank Chloupek]

According to a recent article in MediaPost (http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=51503&Nid=25318&p=369700):

One thing Ford is not cutting back on in its turnaround strategy is marketing, including Digital marketing.

Is marketing part of Ford's current troubles? Or should they be looking to cut costs in this area?

What does everyone think?

[Tats]

Hi Frank,

Ford has a big problem, but it has more to do with how their marketing budget is structured. The size of the advertising component will not determine the ultimate success or failure of the company. Ford’s marketing needs improvement. Marketing is defined not in the traditional sense of advertising and other sales related and supportive activities, but rather as the process of anticipating, identifying and satisfying customer requirements profitably.

Ford has lost touch with the market and needs to come up with products that people want to buy. Ford’s current campaigns support the current view among consumers that the company is in trouble and is appealing to the buying public to help the company solve its problems. This won’t work as well as putting out some winning products would, like Ford has done at various times in the past century.

Priority should be given to gathering actionable market intelligence covering all aspects of defining its product offerings: making adjustments to current ones, determining next year’s models and forecasting and preparing the market for future offerings 5 to 10 years ahead. The product development area is an obvious one for consideration. The amount of research and development being targeted at identifying customer needs years ahead of time as well as for the next quarter needs to be carefully considered and is an extremely important aspect of marketing.

For Ford to regain it’s leadership position, it has to become a better marketing organization then everyone else in the car making business.