Lioncoln Premiere, when Lincoln cars had their own style and design department, and weren't cookie cutter fords or mercs with different nameplates

Notice the enormous running lights - turn signals in the bumpers, has to be the biggest I've ever seen on a car or truck

on the left side of the photo are the cool switch levers.. they might make a bitchin addition to a hot rod

What a big old barge, must be a great solid feeling tank of a ride.

See Tere's photos of it at: http://justacargal-s.blogspot.com/2011/04/good-guys-del-mar-lincoln.html

1937 Lincoln Zephyr

for more coverage of the Del Mar Goodguys, see Tere's blog http://justacargal-s.blogspot.com

1971 Lincoln Continental Farm and Ranch special, some exec thought Lincoln owners needed a truck 30 years before the 2001 Blackwood

How about that? It's the earliest Lincoln truck I've ever seen, and the only Ranchero like Lincoln I've ever seen. The 2001 Lincoln Blackwood was the Neiman Marcus special 50, and in 2002 they made the truck for one year. Basically it was a upscale F150 cab with an outsourced bed.

Found on http://caughtatthecurb.blogspot.com/2011/04/1971-lincoln-continental-mark-iii-farm.html and on Ebay with a reserve that is higher than the bidding is ever going to get. $5855 so far.

Josh rescued this Lincoln from a boring uninteresting looking life

Josh has the pledge guarding the car. (somebody has to keep the kids from leaving fingerprints! I bet the pledge is walking home if he lets anything happen to the car)

Nice smoked taillight lenses

Lincoln Capri at the annual Trueline car show and open house

Lincoln Brand and Porsche 911 Top JD Power's 2011 U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study

Ford's luxury division Lincoln moved up one spot in the annual JD Power reliability study to gain the title of most reliable brand sold in the U.S., ahead of Lexus and Jaguar. The industry overall vehicle dependability has also improved compared to 2010, but automakers still have problems with new technologies and features.

The 2011 study takes into account problems experienced in the past 12 months by more than 43,700 original owners of three-year-old cars (2008 model year). JD Power determines the overall dependability by the level of Problems encountered Per 100 vehicles (PP100). A lower score reflects higher quality and the good news is the overall vehicle dependability averaged 151 PP100, the best value since the creation of the study.

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Automotive Facebook Fans by Brand: August 2010

It was bound to happen and September was finally that month where I didn’t have an opportunity to get the monthly Facebook Fans report up on the blog in the first couple days after capturing the numbers. Fortunately, I did record all the fan counts on September 3, but with the Labor Day weekend and a week of social media fun on the new job (more here at TechCrunch.) I didn’t get a chance until now to finally analyze this month’s data.

First, let’s talk about the brand I used to do digital strategy for: Lincoln. Lincoln’s growth in August definitely received a major jolt as it increased fans from 4,533 to 13,161 leading to a 190% increase. Most of this can be attributed to a contest Lincoln was running in July and August where the brand showcased a chance to be the first to test-drive the all new Lincoln MKZ Hybrid. Lincoln created a special tab for the MKZ and also accompanied the promotion with some email marketing and advertising on Facebook. Of course, the jump is significant, because Lincoln’s fan base is a small number so adding almost 9,000 fans will cause a big boost percentage wise.



Another brand with a rather small fan count, but also a generous gain in fans was Mitsubishi. They saw a 44% gain in fans as they added nearly 13,000 fans in the month. They had several sweepstakes where fans could win a Flip SlideHD Camcorder, $500 gas card, Nikon Digital SLR camera, and ultimately a trip to Japan. Giveaways are certainly an effective way to gain “Likes” as we see in several reports about why people “Like” a brand on Facebook with the number one reason being discounts, support for company number two, and number 3 to get a freebie (full study from ExactTarget.)


Finally, in the giveaway to get Fans Facebook strategy, Mini also participated with their Win a Countryman contest. They saw a strong 36% increase in fans. Product launches naturally tend to increase fan counts beyond the normal 3-6% organic growth, but by adding a giveaway Mini boosted their growth significantly.

Toyota continues to do a lot of marketing on Facebook. They continued throughout August with ads throughout the Facebook site where they mostly promoted their Auto-Biography contest where participants submit videos about their personal experience with Toyota. Toyota is letting the message come from customers, a very smart message after a year I’m sure the company can’t wait to be over.

The other big news for August is BMW is rapidly gaining fans to cross the 2 million fan mark. They just crossed 1 million fans back in July. Yet, they continue to still spend time on the BMW USA fan page. Segmenting fans by creating unique fan pages has never been a good approach in my book, especially considering you can segment your messages to your fan base by using Facebook’s features to send a message only to people in a particular geographic location. That issue aside, they are dominating in the automotive Facebook fan grab.

Mini Throws Down Its Little Gauntlet

Public manufacturer versus manufacturer challenge invites are just plain dumb. The latest one is a marketing effort from Mini asking Porsche to race its 911 against a Mini Cooper S at Road Atlanta.

As Porsche’s President and CEO of North America Detlev Von Platen (or “Det” as I like to call him for short) puts it so well to Mini, “We welcome you at Sebring, Le Mans, Daytona or any other sanctioned race where there is more at stake than T-shirts and valet parking spaces.”

The Porsche President and CEO and anyone else with half a brain knows that if Mini really wants to race another manufacturer they have a couple real options:

Why Mini's Challenge Is Weak

Do as “Det” says and enter your car in a sanctioned race. Commit yourself to racing, don’t just do some lame publicity stunt. If you do want to do a marketing version than just do it. Here is how.

Take your car and buy a manufacturer’s car and race the two cars at a track. Even better use the same driver to man both cars and race for times to see which car really performs best since any true racing fan knows the person driving has a huge impact on winning. (By the way, we did this with the Lincoln MKS 6 versus 8 Challenge and yes we did it at a high altitude for a reason.)

Copy General Motors and do something similar to what Bob Lutz did with the “May the Best Car Win” that became the CTS-V Challenge.

Now this effort was a bit more organic than say Mini’s boardroom marketing idea. See Lutz just made an open challenge that of course was rightfully ignored by the manufacturers, but interestingly not ignored by a Wes Siler from the blog Jalopnik. Wes’ pressing of GM led to a competition where the manufacturers opted out and owners and bloggers showed up to race Lutz. Unfortunately they also raced a heavily loaded track of CTS-Vs and one manned by professional driver John Heinricy - to make sure a Cadillac won.

What worked so well for GM is that they got the online community involved and the trash talking was instantaneous. A manufacturer-to-manufacturer challenge just doesn’t have the same appeal. If a company really wants to challenge another brand, get some competitor vehicles and go at it.


A public challenge is a cheap way at an attempt to generate buzz. It didn't do much as buzz dropped to nothing after the June 9th when mini announced their challenge.

Facebook Response

Mini USA posted the Porsche response letter three times on its fan page. I’m guessing multiple people are administrating the page and failing to check what's posted. That aside, the response from the fans was an overwhelmingly positive rah-rah for Mini mainly saying that Porsche is chicken. So it did rally some already pumped owners or fans of the brand. A few people actually wondered why Mini isn’t responding by entering Mini into the racing circuit. We all know why that isn’t happening…

UPDATE June 16, 2010: And it keeps getting weird...

Extending Your Brand Through Song

Marketing has brought cars with music together for decades. Ads like Cadillac’s infamous Break Through spot featuring the energy of Led Zepplin along with a strong Baby Boomer emotional appeal or the wholesome goodness of Dina Shore singing “See the USA in your Chevrolet” all have their place in automotive and music history.

Some things never change, as there seems to be a surge in music and automotive marketing. It seems all brands – luxury and non-luxury – have found some sort of alignment with the passion music brings to a product and with so many genres of music and so many vehicles with different audiences finding the right fit may be easier than ever.

Shakira Shakes Her Hips for Seat

One of my favorite integrations comes from Volkswagen’s European Seat brand featuring Shakira. The campaign is developed around one song: Good Stuff. The Seat Good Stuff website is full of music, cars, games and chances to win tickets. Sharkira’s wild hair and long legs take prominence over the Seat Ibiza, which even has a Special Edition Good Stuff model to align with the campaign. Of all the current music and automaker integrations this is the only one that has built a car for sale to the public. Seat gets the prize for having not only the most elaborate, fanciful site but they also integrated things to the product level with tinted windows, iPods, and 16” “Sonda” wheels.

The campaign is further connected through a Good Stuff Facebook fan page that currently has 3,748 fans. Like most campaign Facebook sites there is very little engagement, especially from the brand as the team in charge only posted one wall post back in February.

Overall the integration is well executed, minus the lame attempt at a Facebook presence, with plenty of artist and vehicle alignment. Bringing the experience online further strengthens the brand’s sponsorship of Shakira’s European Tour. The site has several links to listen to music, find chances to win concert tickets, extend alignment with the brand through Seat’s Club Seat member website, and let’s users easily share the content with others through common social networking sites.

Ram Trucks' Letter Writing Request

Going after a completely different demographic than Seat, Chrysler Group’s new Ram Truck brand wants its potential customers to write letters to America’s soldiers at war. All letters will be collected at Zac Brown Band concerts and Ram Truck dealerships.

"This unique endeavor is derived from respect and admiration, from both the Ram Truck Brand and Zac Brown Band, for the men and women in the military," said Marissa Hunter, Head of Ram Truck Brand Communications, Chrysler Group LLC. "It is our hope that these letters serve as a source of appreciation and comfort."

In exchange for the letters, Ram Truck will give letter writers a free special Zac Brown Band CD entitled "Breaking Southern Ground."

All of this is for the launch of Ram’s Heavy Duty truck. The “Letters for Lyrics” campaign is fully integrated into the Ram Trucks shopping website. There is a page explaining what people need to do to get the free CD and several accompanying videos are viewable on the site along with links to the Ram Heavy Duty truck. There are a few icons available to promote social sharing, but they are not prominent. The main message here is to get people to write and visit a Ram Truck dealership. Hopefully, when someone comes to get a free CD, they’ll also take a test drive in any Ram or Dodge product (the two brands share the same dealer network.)

Lincoln Music

Early this year our team at Lincoln launched the Lincoln Music Experience Sweepstakes along with a Lincoln branded Music micro-site (in full disclosure: I’m the digital brand strategist for the Lincoln and Mercury brands at Team Detroit, in case you didn’t read my bio.) Over the past three years, music has played a significant role in the re-branding of Lincoln. The ads feature a space themed design treatment and usually a reinterpretation of a classic 80s song by a breakthrough brand.

To further extend Lincoln’s affiliation with music, the Lincoln and Music website originally was designed to promote a sweepstakes where one could win a Lincoln vehicle and tickets to see the band Shiny Toy Guns. Site visitors can also download music, explorer Lincoln’s THX II sound system, and had an opportunity to vote to choose the next up and coming band for the next Lincoln commercial.

And The Band Plays On

These three examples show how a variety of brands are using music to tell their product or brand story. Each vehicle segment also appeals to different target consumers and finds ways to reach out to potential customers through contests or giveaways.

All are driving consumers to the vehicle shopping pages and include some sort of social media link sharing. Since this is also about music, every site includes at least one downloadable MP3 music file to take the brand’s sound with its visitors.