In the summer of 2010, Ford Motor Company will begin selling its new MyKey product to the public. As the number of accidents of teen drivers has been increasing, Ford Motor Company has been looking for ways to promote safety on the road and insure that the numbers start decreasing. “According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, teens are more likely to take risks such as speeding—a contributing factor in 30 percent of all fatal crashes. Teens are also less likely to wear safety belts than older drivers.1” MyKey uses a new technology that allows parents to control the speed, volume, and fuel settings on a teen’s car, beginning in 2010 with the Ford Focus. The aim is to limit speed and audio volume and improve fuel efficiency.2 MyKey also provides the option of safety belt usage by programming an indicator of some type on the key’s settings.
The Ford Motor Company’s website states that “about 50 percent of those who would consider purchasing MyKey also said they would allow their children to use the family vehicle more often if it were equipped with the new technology.3” This statistic makes it clear that when considering advertising and marketing, Ford Motor Company should focus its attention on targeting parents, rather than the teens that are likely to be driving the vehicles.
In its advertising and marketing strategies, if Ford Motor Company’s MyKey is intended to promote the safety of its drivers, then it must instill into the audience’s head that Ford is a safety- conscious brand. The company should use psychological marketing techniques to evoke emotion from advertisement viewers. Each year, over 5,000 teens ages 16 to 20 die due to fatal injuries caused by car accidents. About 400,000 of the drivers in the same age group are seriously injured due to these accidents. In fact, 12 percent of all fatal car accidents are responsible by these teens.4 These statistics of teen car accidents should be instilled into the viewers’ heads to make them understand the seriousness of the issue Ford Motor Company is trying to correct. People often do not like to believe bad information, and it is often pushed out of their minds. It should be Ford’s job to make those viewers remember the seriousness of these vehicle accidents, both fatal and non fatal. In turn, Ford should then promote its stance in the safety of its drivers, and resolve it with the informing of its new MyKey technology. It should be instilled into the viewers’ minds that there is a way for parents to control the way their teens drive, and Ford Motor Company will work with them to enable this to happen.
In marketing this new product, Ford’s marketing department is most likely going to decide to use narrowcasting. Narrowcasting diminishes the idea of a general audience and favors a more segmented targeting approach. This tactic is essential for Ford with this product, because people are not very likely to want to control their own settings from a key when they are the drivers—it would not be very possible. The people that are going to consider purchasing this product, and in turn, the car that comes along with it, are the people who are going to be setting the limits for others; and that is a parent’s job. Ford Motor Company needs to be able to reach parent’s of new drivers on an emotional level to persuade them that they are the ones in need of this new MyKey product. If Ford targets the general audience as a whole, less people are likely to connect to the message of the product. The advertisement would read something like “MyKey technology, Ford enables safer driving for teens”. With a more narrow approach, the advertisement could instead read “MyKey technology, Ford brings safer driving to your teen.” This would allow the targeting consumers (parents) to connect emotionally to the product on a more personal level.
With the development of this new product, it can be seen that the Ford Motor Company is looking to be known as a leader in vehicle safety. In an effort to further promote its marketing campaign for MyKey, Ford should also work to implement safety into its brand identity. If consumers feel that Ford, as a brand, has delivered high safety products and worked to promote and ensure the safety of its drivers, then when MyKey becomes available, consumers will be less timid to try the product. This tactic can work to instill in people’s minds that the culture of Ford is ensuring safety for all of its drivers, not specifically teens. Then, in the release of MyKey, the product could be the first of many to promote safety in each of its driver segments.
All of these tactics mentioned thus far can be tied into rhetorical marketing. The use of rhetoric is the most important component in an advertisement. The message is supposed to reach the viewer and have an effect on him or her in a way that will encourage the purchasing of the product being advertised. In the case of MyKey, Ford’s advertising campaigns should focus on emotional appeal, to show parents the seriousness of their teen’s safety while driving. Studying rhetoric can help the marketing and advertising team find the correct word usage to effectively reach and have an impact on consumers. In using emotions as Ford’s means to reach the audience, the marketing and advertising teams should use the form of communication known as “patos”5. This form targets the fast perception of Ford’s consumers when viewing an emotional advertisement, the visual intensity the viewer will have when they can possibly see an image of a car wreckage after a fatal accident, and the needed feeling of immediate reaction, where the consumers will decide that MyKey is something they need for their teen drivers.
MyKey seems like a perfect candidate for product placement in advertising outside of the ad itself. The product is a new technology that is all contained in one car key. It seems that movies and television shows would be the perfect medium to instill the idea of the new technology into the minds of viewers. The idea seems to be perfect for a television episode storyline. A mother and father are worried about their teenager driving alone for the first time after receiving his or her license. The parents purchase a Ford Focus for their teenager and a scene shows them programming the speed and volume limits on the key and then shows how it works when the teenager actually drives the car. It is important that if Ford were to use product placement techniques that it instill family values in to the program. This would allow viewers that are parents of teenagers to relate on the same value level of safety as the actors using the product in the television show or movie.
Product placement would allow Ford Motor Company to connect to its target consumers on a more emotional level. Viewers choose which television shows and movies they watch, and usually decide on them based on how they can relate to the characters in the situations in the programs. If Ford were to research the most popular television shows and movies that the general age of adults who are parents of teenagers watch, it could dive into the minds of the viewers to show that if they believe they relate to the characters and situations in those programs, then they could relate to the products they use; and in this case, the product would be Ford Motor Company’s Ford Focus, and ultimately, MyKey.
As time has evolved, advertising techniques have played a larger role in the everyday lives of consumers. Being exposed to the popular methods of commercials, online advertisements, magazine advertisements, and billboards, consumers can only wonder what the future will hold in terms of new advertising techniques. It is evident that marketers are looking for ways to delve deeper into the minds and hearts of consumers to allow for the making of connections between consumer and product. It is the job of companies to give consumers exactly what they want. In Ford Motor Company’s case, its job is to show its consumers that with MyKey, the company will provide them with the safety they want for their teenage children, and ultimately, their families. To stay ahead of the competition in the future, Ford Motor Company should look to make advertisements more meaningful to consumers and touch them on an even more personal level. This can include going one step further into researching the statistics of fatal car accidents in each geographic area of its target consumers. National advertisements can be made and run, but they information can be altered to provide more factual information on each region the target
audience lives in.
The future of advertising and marketing does not necessarily need to become more technologically advanced, but what it does need to do is touch the minds and hearts of the audience. Consumers are bombarded with advertisements in a majority of their day to day lives. It is easy to tune out and disregard some of these advertisements because they do not prove to be of any significance in their lives. If companies aim to touch the consumers and a more personal and emotional level, they will find something they can relate to, and in turn, pay closer attention to the advertisements.
1
http://www.ford.com/about-ford/news-announcements/press-releases/press-releases-detail/pr-ford26rsquos-new-mykey-system-291722 Ibid
3 Ibid
4
http://www.car-accidents.com/teen-car-accidents.html5
http://www.boennelykke.dk/default.asp?pid=59&sub=53
