• by Karl Greenberg , June 13, 2011

Ford is giving players of digital games a virtual view of the Focus sedan. The Dearborn, Mich.-based automaker is putting the redesigned car in the Electronic Arts platform "The Sims 3," the latest iteration of a life-simulation game of which EA says it has sold over 145 million copies.

"The Sims 3" lets players create characters, then build a verisimilitude of a life around them -- a narrative that includes goals, lifetime wishes, and whether or not they succeed or end up in the virtual gutter. As part of that grand scheme, the Focus car is a free download on PC and Mac, and PlayStation and Xbox 360 versions of game.

Brian McClary, Ford's social and emerging media specialist, says the involvement demonstrates Ford's efforts to find alternative channels beyond traditional media. McClary, who confesses he's something of a gamer and tech geek, tells Marketing Daily that the key to the company's gaming product-integration and marketing strategy is making sure players get something valuable from the engagement. "We want to give something back," he says.

In the case of "The Sims 3," players get the Focus Neon Nights package, giving players -- besides the car -- things like virtual Ford-branded T-shirts, high-end stereos and neon lighting for their avatars' virtual houses.

Ford had the Escape Hybrid, Fusion, Edge, Mustang GT and an earlier-model Focus in "The Sims 2" and Fiesta in "The Sims 3" PC/Mac version late last year as part of a package for the game called Fiesta Urban Streetscape. It includes things like signs reading "Hot Stuff Crossing!"

McClary, who says players of the game are pretty evenly split male and female 18 to 34 years of age, "which is a perfect fit for Focus," adds that gaming has broadened so much over the past four or five years that it has to be considered a medium, rather than merely a pastime.

"Where it used to be platforms like Xbox, PlayStation or handheld devices, it has expanded to virtually every digital platform, including smartphones. As more people are playing games, they are spending less time with traditional media, whether TV, or magazines. It has simply become a bigger portion of how people engage media during the day."

EA said the launch of "The Sims 3" was its most successful ever with 1.4 million copies sold in the first week, and that an internal study found 28% of players drive Ford vehicles (the real kind.)

Ford says players have downloaded its vehicles more than 8 million times, and that Fiesta has been downloaded more than 200,000 times. The most downloaded virtual version of a Ford is the Mustang GT from "The Sims 2" followed by the Escape Hybrid.

The "Sims 3" game does not let consumers see the inside of Focus -- McClary says Ford is days away from announcing a new game-based program that lets players do that, and thus will let Ford tout its in-vehicle technology offerings -- but he says the point is awareness.

"A lot of consumers still think of Focus as what it was six or seven years ago, but the new car is totally different and extremely sporty looking. What we wanted to do is say, 'This is the new Focus.' The overall goal is not to get players to think, 'Oh, I have to go directly to my dealership now,' as you might expect consumers to do with a lease deal. It's about broadening favorability and awareness," he says.