Business Insight Zone

Earlier this year at South by Southwest, I had the good fortune to meet Scott Monty, a heavy hitter in social media who was then doing consulting work in his longtime home of Boston. Over the summer, Scott made a big career move when he took Ford Motor Company’s offer to direct its social-media efforts.

Ford’s been in the news plenty lately — and I’ve written about the company myself — so I wanted to know from Scott how a company like Ford hopes to strengthen its business using social media. He answered my question in generous detail, as you’ll see from the transcript.

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Q: You were well-ensconced in a consultancy tied to Boston’s vibrant social-media scene before you moved to your current job. What convinced you to pick up stakes and move halfway across the country to work for an old-school company like Ford?

It’s a good question and one that I get a lot, as you can imagine. When I was first approached by Ford, I turned them down flat, because I didn’t want to move to Detroit. After a while, we reconnected and I was a little more open to speaking with the communications team; after taking the time to fly to Michigan to meet with key team members in marketing and communications, I was sold on the passion, talent, and intelligence of everyone I met. When I heard that I would have the full support of the Vice President of Communications and the Group Vice President of Marketing, that clinched it.

In addition to the people of Ford, I stopped to think about the opportunity that was being presented to me: I was being given the chance to lead social media efforts for a top Fortune 500 company (#7 at the time), doing exactly what I had been doing for the past year an a half. When else would that happen? Further, I knew that the U.S. auto makers were behind the competition in terms of perception, and I thought that I’d like to be part of the effort to turn that around. To me, it’s a much more exciting and challenging opportunity than leading marketing & communications efforts for a brand that simply needs to maintain its status.

Q: What have been the biggest transitions for you to make in terms of your daily work?

The most significant change in my daily habits is that I don’t have as much time to dedicate to reading the blogs in my feedreader. There’s just so much information that we’re creating at Ford (and materials that I need to review in order to be effective at my job) that I don’t have time to spend time in my feedreader. On the other hand, since I’m now commuting in the car for 25-30 minutes each way, one of the things that I’ve been able to take up again is listening to podcasts.

In terms of time management, I’m constantly battling the two-headed beast: my inbox and the constant requests (and need) to attend meetings. At at company this size, it’s imperative that we share information, and in our current model, that comes in the forms of email and meetings — both of which take up an inordinate amount of time.

Q: A century-old car maker might not be the most obvious breeding ground for social-media innovation — what do you aspire to accomplish at Ford?

Ultimately, I’d like to see Ford recognized as a leader in digital communications and as the world’s leading social automotive brand. This isn’t going to be easy, by any stretch of the imagination. When you consider our global market and the various nuances between regional social networking habits and information consumption, along with our vast audiences (customers, employees, suppliers, dealers, investors, retirees, etc.) and various departments that have the need for social media (marketing, communications, HR, product development, customer service, IT, etc.), it’s a very complex assignment.

If we can start with a solid social media strategy and begin to execute both internally and externally, we’ll be in a position to humanize the company to the outside world. If the world at large could be made more aware of the stories we have to tell (and of the storytellers themselves), and if we give them the ability to share these stories with their own communities, we’ll begin to see perceptions changing, and, ultimately, to see a rise in sales.

Q: In what areas of social media do you see Ford making an impact?

One of the areas I started on very early was the idea of opening up our media events — in-vehicle programs and forums with our subject matter experts — to bloggers at large. Historically, these have been open to traditional journalists and, more recently, to automotive bloggers. But my contention is that nearly everyone needs to buy a car, so if we can form relationships with mainstream bloggers, we can reach more mainstream customers — the readers of these blogs who trust the authors because they’ve been following them for so long. With that theory in place, I’ve been pushing to reach out to bloggers interested in technology, environmental issues, luxury/design, and parenting, to name a few.

Aside from blogger relations, we’ve got an immediate opportunity to help change the perception through my own personal participation on Twitter, blogs, and forums. I do a lot of commenting on posts that may have some misinformation, and I share news and information from my unique position within the company. And I hope I do all of this in an authentic way, to give the company a little more of a human element.

Q: What are the biggest impediments — technical, cultural, financial, or otherwise — that Ford faces as it tries to become a social-media-savvy company?

Overall, I think this is going to be more of a cultural effort than a technical one. Sure, we’ll have to train people on rudimentary tools and the rules of the road, but the technology will continue to evolve. What needs to happen is that Ford employees need to be empowered, trained, and trusted on digital communications in general, and various levels of leadership need to demonstrate that this is a crucial part of Ford’s business plan moving forward.

I often compare the corporate culture of fear that runs rampant through legal departments everywhere — the fear that employees will say something they shouldn’t say — with the same panic and skepticism that they met e-mail with some 15-20 years ago. I think e-mail has turned out pretty successfully, don’t you?

Managing risk is always at the top of mind for legal teams at large companies, mostly because in today’s litigious society, there’s always a chance of public statements being used against a company. But if we approach the practice with common sense (they haven’t removed our phones or e-mail accounts) and clear communications guidelines, things should work out. If a company has policies in place and an employee abuses them, then there will be consequences, no matter what the format or venue of those transgressions.

Q: I’ve praised Ford for its recent efforts at improvement, but the company has also lost more than $20 billion since 2006. How do you sell the benefits of social media at a time when the company must be tempted to keep its focus on the short-term bottom line?

We also had our first profitable quarter on our way to a turnaround under Alan Mulally in Q1 of 2008. Were it not for the spike in oil prices and commodities, as well as the housing and financial market crisis, we’d be in a better place. But I digress.

There are two ways to think about social media and our focus on our bottom line: one is that it’s a low-cost channel that has the potential to garner disproportionate impact. So we were to shift some money from a more traditional media spend to social media efforts, [and] we can show immediate and measurable results. The second is, as we tell the press in general, we have a plan and we continue to take fast and decisive action to implement that plan. Digital communications is a key part of that plan and of the future of Ford.

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My thanks to Scott for sparing the time for this interview. Since Scott and I talked the other day, he wrote a long, impassioned post at his personal blog that shines even more light on his efforts at Ford:

How You Can Use Social Media to Help the U.S. Auto Industry

If you’re at all interested in the fate of the Detroit-based auto makers, by all means take the time to read what Scott has to say.

Meanwhile, I’ll hand the mic to you:

What do YOU think of Ford’s efforts in social media?

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Category: Manufacturing & Heavy Industry, Social media, Transportation