• by Karl Greenberg , November 11, 2008

When it comes to invitation-only events aimed at putting trendsetters behind the wheel of an automaker's newest and coolest vehicles, the automakers that come to mind are not typically middle-market brands.

One thinks of Land Rover parties in the Hamptons, Jaguar track days, or Taste of Lexus. One doesn't usually think of Ford. But Ford took that exclusive high road recently for a pre-launch campaign to get the buzz going for its latest crossover SUV, Flex.

The effort, "Flex Insider," developed by Ford and ad agency Team Detroit/JWT, was a five-city program that gave invited intelligentsia--from lifestyle media to radio deejays, architects, agency creative types, and musicians--a tour of the vehicle, and then an urban tour in fleets of the vehicles to local galleries, restaurants and nightspots.

Each guest later received a digital mix tape curated by San Francisco-based music marketing firm Rock River Music. The music came via email as codes for free music downloads from iTunes. The viral element enabled them to pass those codes along to five other users.

Kristen Naimi, management supervisor of brand experience at JWT/Team Detroit, says the tours began in June in Los Angeles, with subsequent events in San Francisco, Atlanta, Miami and New York. "Part of the objective was to get media coverage, so we did a three-night event in each market, the first of which involved lifestyle media," she says. "We felt it was a unique enough vehicle to justify getting media that wouldn't normally be covering automotive."

For each night in each city, the first stop was an art gallery, where attendees would see a local artist using a Flex roof as a medium for painting.

The second stop was a restaurant serving Flex-inspired dishes, with the chef making rounds to explain how the dishes reflect the vehicle's zeitgeist.

The last stop was a nightspot--or, for the Atlanta event, a bowling alley.

"We wanted each of the three stops during each evening to relate to either the personality trait of the vehicle or a physical attribute. And we wanted to discover cool and hip gems of the city that didn't have mass awareness," says Naimi.

She says Ford invited only 150 or so people per market, but magnified the impact of the events by partnering with regional publications and local radio stations. Ford and JWT/Team Detroit created local city guides that were broadcast on spot TV and geo-targeted Web banners.

"We partnered not only with regional publications, but also local radio stations, and we shot TV spots at each event with participants, cut that together and ran it on local stations. So, you would see local deejays or broadcasters in the vehicle in an ad on your local station," adds Connie Fontaine, Ford brand content and alliance manager.

Naimi said the spots played for two weeks on late-night programming on local CBS affiliates before heading to the Web for embedding in local-market banner ads.

Says Fontaine: "We knew we wanted a summer event--but also, we didn't have lot of vehicles, so a test drive was out of the question. Yes, it is unusual for the Ford brand, but it works very well because of the intrigue around the vehicle. Most attendees had never heard of it before."