• by Tom Hespos , August 15, 2006

"Acting small gets you big... All the attributes of a successful small company--the attention to detail, the willingness to work with individuals, the ability to be authentic, the fact that you don't have policies, the fact that you're willing to interact with the world as the world comes to you--are the things that the market now demands." - Seth Godin, comments taken from "Across The Sound," podcast, episode #47 (Celebrity SethMatch).

Seth Godin's as-yet-unreleased new book, Small is the New Big, may not hit the shelves until later this week, but Seth recently stopped by Joseph Jaffe's podcast to share a little bit of what's to come in the new tome.

I don't always agree with what Seth Godin says, and my tendency is to ignore pronouncements in the form of "[X] is the new [Y]," but this nugget of wisdom is something we all ought to spend some time considering. We're all being expected to act like a mom and pop store, even if we're an international conglomerate.

One of the ways in which we're becoming smaller is by delivering on the expectation that we'll communicate directly with the market through online channels. This past week in particular, we saw a big marketer start to act smaller by communicating its issues to the market and inviting people to comment on those issues. I'm talking about the next stage of the Ford "Bold Moves" campaign.

Last week, Ford placed a number of ads across select blogs and blog networks, essentially admitting that it had one of the worst environmental records of any major auto manufacturer. The ads linked to the FordBoldMoves.com Web site, a feature of which is a "Community Buzz" section--a blog where people can leave comments.

This campaign has gotten a lot of people excited, me included. Henry Copeland, the terrifically smart guy who heads up BlogAds, wrote a note to several bloggers that described the Bold Moves campaign as the "first Cluetrain ad," referencing The ClueTrain Manifesto, which posits that "markets are conversations" and encourages companies to communicate with their markets directly.

I'm not sure that a frank conversation was what Ford had in mind, however. The first few posts within their Community Buzz section were excerpts and links to other bloggers who were writing about Ford, which makes sense for a large company trying to be smaller. But I found the conversation to be a little less than authentic. For one, there was no personality behind the blog--and in looking through the posts, I wasn't sure if there was a real human being at Ford behind them, or whether somebody at their agency or at another company was writing the posts.

Don't get me wrong. I think having a focal point for an online conversation is a huge move forward. In fact, we've been recommending to a lot of clients and prospects that they use ads as conversation-starters to talk about issues important to their businesses. But we also recommend that real human beings at their companies maintain their blog and respond to all comments. People who come for the conversation need to know there's an accountable human being there, not some anonymous commenter with a sketchy connection to the company.

My take on this whole thing is that Ford has made some very significant strides toward becoming smaller and more authentic, but there are still plenty of things it can do to get there more quickly. First and foremost is the cultivation of authentic conversation by having real Ford employees with real names connect directly with customers. It would also help to have those employees let customers and prospects know how Ford plans to use the feedback it gets from the marketplace. People want to know how their suggestion about improving the Mustang's gas mileage is being communicated to people within Ford who have a stake in the Mustang's design.

I think that we've witnessed a giant step forward in marketing with Ford's Bold Moves campaign. I look at this shift in strategy as the first step in a journey--and we're now ready for the second step, which involves breaking down those huge walls around the corporate structure and acting more like a mom and pop shop by facilitating direct, two-way communication.

We'll get there.