There are lots of interesting jobs in the automotive world, especially at the OEM level. Scott Monty has one of the neatest in our opinion as Ford’s Global Head of Social Media. Monty’s job is a fusion of public relations, sales, communications, advertising, and basic human psychology. His tenure at Ford began in 2008 and through the four years he has been with the company, Ford has certainly established itself as one of the leaders in the social media field when it comes to domestic auto manufacturers.

A family vacation to Disney World after talking to Scott (and prior to writing this) gave us a totally new appreciation of the role that social media can play for a large company like Ford. Considering social media at Disney, that company would never have to run a television, radio or internet ad again due to the fact that every person with a smart phone on any of their myriad of properties is tweeting, facebooking, or texting their friends about how great their experience is, how cool the new hotel is, and how happy they are to be there. To us, it seems that Disney is in social media Nirvana. The active customers are selling their product to the next wave of potential customers. The message is being passed on not by the company, but by the people consuming the product. That’s the holy grail of the whole social media landscape.

What we came to appreciate more about Monty’s role at Ford is that he doesn’t have this type of incredible self-feeding mill to rely upon on a day to day basis. A company like Ford is depending on creating interesting content, connections, and reasons for both their existing customers and their potential customers to consider the blue oval for their next buy. That next buy is big time as a car is normally one of the largest ticket purchases of any person’s life. We’re not talking about Mickey Mouse pancakes, we’re talking 20,30, and $40,000 cars, trucks, and vans here. So how does a car company humanize itself in the realm of social media? How does it navigate the waters to keep long standing customers happy, potential customers interested, and anyone paying attention engaged and not feeling as though they are under a constant sales assault from one of the largest companies in the world? We didn’t know either, so that’s why we got on the phone with Scott Monty.

BangShift: Is the major goal of Ford’s social media efforts to retain current customers or draw in new ones? How do you talk to a young guy interested in a Focus ST and a potentially older customer looking at a Boss 302 Mustang? 

Scott Monty: The goal is really to do both and to maintain a balance that speaks to both the heritage customer that sees us as the F150 and Mustang company as well as being right there for the new customer who is pleased about their purchase and wants to share that message with the company, their friends, etc. We need to have a respect for both end of the spectrum  and we work hard to provide content that speaks to all of the different potential customer segments we have. If you look at Ford’s Facebook presence, we have 70-80 differently targeted pages. You are not going to talk to the person buying a Mustang the same way you are going to talk to the person looking at an electric vehicle.

BangShift: Is social media going to kill traditional advertising as we see it? Do ad agencies fear it? 

Scott Monty: I think that social media is actually the great hope of advertising. The ability to target audiences and speak to people directly has never really existed like it does today. The old model is not completely dead, but it certainly isn’t the way of the future either. Things are shifting and scattering and becoming far more friendly to track and learn from. When you buy an ad during the Super Bowl, is there any direct way to track who saw it and what kind of influence it had? We can look at campaigns which include social media aspects and see how well they performed and learn from them. On the other side, I think the world went overboard for a long time with the focus on getting fans and followers. It was all about how many fans or followers could be grabbed and built up. After a while it was like, ‘so what?’ With social media we have the ability to talk directly to exactly the people we want. It gives us great ability to see if we’re onto something or not.

BangShift: It seems that the real love and passion for cars that used to exude from the pores of the USA is drying up. It used to be a traditional thing to pose the whole family in front of the new car and snap a photo when dad brought it home or visit a local dealer when the new models came in. Those things don’t seem to be happening any more. How does your job counter that?

Scott Monty: I really believe that the passion does still exist and maybe people don’t take the time to gather the whole family around their new car but they are certainly shooting a photo of it with their smart phone or using Instagram, e-mail, and text to tell everyone that they know about their new car. There are still some very definite touch points when people buy a new car. It is an exciting experience and people are still genuinely happy to be driving a new car. We create lots of content and that content is created by people here at Ford who are very passionate about the products that we’re building. From enthusiasts and gearheads to the people we have working on the in-car technology and environmental aspects of our products, we want them reaching out to our customers and potential customers because they are the ones with the true passion and excitement about what they are working on.

BangShift: When you came to Ford in this position in 2008, were there a lot of skeptics in the room about what social media was and could be? Also, have social media consumers become more savvy with how they view messages and content from companies like Ford and how have companies like Ford gotten better at delivering those messages and that content?

Scott Monty: I think that there were some people wondering who this strange guy was and what was he doing here, but that’s kind of a natural thing. I knew coming in that my challenge was to help the business. I think one of the challenges was and always is in any company is showing the insiders what the outside is like. The interesting thing about the whole social space is that companies and people entered it together and all kind of figured it out at the same time. I think that people were pretty forgiving of companies and organizations at that time because they were kind of fumbling around as well. The main lessons that we have learned over the years is that what we’re doing needs to ad value to the consumer. Are we giving someone some entertainment? The chance to tell their friends that they were the first to see something? These types of experiences are what we think of as being important. People now have a very low tolerance for spam and the tell/sell type approach. The value and good content, that’s what we’re working on. Honestly, we take lots of swings before getting a hit sometimes. We test lots of different ideas and work on ways to tailor our messaging. While this may not sound like something that makes a lot of sense, your formula cannot be formulaic with social media. There needs to be an awareness of what’s going on in the world, pop culture, etc. It is important to be ready to jump on something quickly if necessary.

BangShift: What portion of Ford’s advertising/promotional budget is set aside for social media?

Scott Monty: When I came here in 2008, 18% of our advertising budget was set aside from social media/digital efforts and it has now grown to 25% of the budget. Jim Farley is a strong believer in the direction that we’re going and I think that we’ll continue to see increases for digital and social efforts in the future.

BangShift: In closing, what do you feel has been the single greatest social media success of your tenure (thus far) at Ford?

Scott Monty: If there was one trans-formative moment for us with respect to social media, it was the reveal of the 2011 Ford Explorer. This was an entirely new vehicle and we revealed it in the summer of 2010 in a way no one had ever done before. Rather than just roll it out to the media, we did the reveal live on Facebook and in eight cities simultaneously. We did it on a day that we had to ourselves media-wise and it was an amazing success. This was the first ever reveal of its kind and we had a measured impact larger than what we’d see from the purchase of a Super Bowl ad. It was a multi-faceted project that really demonstrated how powerful a medium social media can be when creative thinking and a fresh approach blend together. The amount of attention and buzz that surrounded that reveal got a lot of people’s attention.

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The auto industry has always been an spellbinding enterprise for us. These companies assemble machines of metal, plastic, and rubber but ironically rely on lots of human emotion and senses to sell them. Scott Monty has one of the coolest jobs in Detroit. His position of overseeing Ford’s role in one of the most malleable, free form, constantly developing facets of modern life must be filled with daily challenges and foibles even he can’t predict. Call us crazy, but that sounds like a whole lot of fun. (Global pressure filled fun, but fun all the same).