• by Karl Greenberg , April 13, 2010

What's the best way to get people to offer serious suggestions on new products, innovations or technologies? Offer them a chance at a trip over Niagara Falls in a pickle barrel or the possibility that their suggestions will be taken seriously and may even show up as modifications to products.

Ford is counting on the latter. The company has been vocal about embracing social media as a marketing and market research channel, but has also walked the walk in the past two years with a spate of programs to turn Web-savvy people into advocates, consumers into critics, and students into Ford researchers.

The company on Tuesday used the 2010 SAE World Conference in Detroit -- whose theme this year is ecollaboration -- to announce a new Web program aimed at getting consumers to offer suggestions to the company. The reward? Their suggestions, if popular, will get a serious going over from Ford designers.

At the engineering conference, Ford's president of American Ops, Mark Fields, said the company's new "Your Ideas" is an extension of "The Ford Story" (TheFordStory.com), which Ford launched in 2008 to talk about its R&D work and get feedback.

Fields said the new site lets consumers submit ideas, critiques and technology suggestions they think would work with Ford vehicles.

He said the company is trying to take market research out of focus-group conference rooms into the social-media sphere. "Ford is turning to the social Web as an innovative way of generating new vehicle feature ideas customers really want and value," he said.

The "Your Ideas" site, a pilot program, is meant to be a community where members can rate others' ideas, and also follow responses to their own suggestions. Ford says its Advanced Product Marketing and Planning teams will sift through the most popular ideas, i.e., those that get the best responses.

The company says that since it went live, The Ford Story has garnered over 2.6 million visits. "The Ford Story has connected with customers because it's a place where Ford is sharing what is happening with the company is a more open and transparent way," Fields said.

In a high-tech version of getting a university student to design your loft bed, Ford is also getting University of Michigan students to brainstorm on in-vehicle social media technology. That program, "American Journey 2.0," is ultimately meant as a font of new apps for the company's Ford Sync telematics technology co-designed by Microsoft, per the company.

The automaker says one fruit of the UM collaboration is "Fiestaware" developed with Microsoft and Intel. Ford is also doing programs with MIT, Shanghai Jiaotong University, and Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics.