Ugly? or Fugly?

It’s time to talk about a campaign that failed miserably. This is one of those!

Given the amount of money and time that goes into designing a new car it is easy to get blind-sighted by your own ego and lose the ability to evaluate your product objectively. It also didn’t help much that the marketing wheel of the industry was a closed loop and controlled for limiting any dissenting view of a new product.

Car manufacturers had a fairly simple marketing cycle for their cars, they would unveil their cars at international shows, have specialized publications which depended on handouts from the industry review their cars and make sure that the reviews are gentle and not scathing, and then wait for the people to decide with their bucks whether the car will flop or not.

The internet and social media changed everything, now everyone and anyone is a critic and if you are at the bad side of your audience on the internet then the whole world will know about it. So when car manufacturers like Ford and Honda tested the waters of social media marketing some of them forgot that on social media the audience is in control.