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"Move over, Mike Rowe. Ford has a new spokesman, or more accurately, spokespuppet.\nIn the past couple of weeks, Ford has quietly introduced Doug, an orange puppet, to publicize the company\u2019s 2012 Focus. Doug is a social media animal \u2014 appearing only on YouTube, Twitter and (soon) Facebook. \nFord\u2019s got some major Hollywood comedy talent behind Doug\u2019s adventures, including Paul Feig, a director for The Office and Freaks and Geeks; and Rob Cohen, a writer for The Simpsons. John Ross Bowie, an actor and comedian who has appeared on Reno 911 and Curb Your Enthusiasm, among other places, and actor/comedian Paul F. Tompkins, of Anchorman: The Legend of Run Burgundy, also play John, the Ford Guy, and Doug, the Puppet, respectively.\nScott Monty, Ford\u2019s global digital and multimedia communications manager,  tweeted about a video of Doug thwarting a robbery to get the campaign going early this month. Since then, the video has gotten close to 350,000 views on YouTube, making it one of Ford\u2019s most-viewed videos. Ford has loaded a half-dozen videos on focusdoug\u2019s channel, including a press conference introducing Doug. (See the video above.)\nJon Beebe, digital marketing manager for Ford, says there will be a few videos added every week during the next few months that follow a story arc, but Beebe says these aren\u2019t webisodes per se, but rather just an online advertising effort. The goal, says Beebe, is to reach consumers who don\u2019t really know Ford Focus or know it only as an econo-box. \n\u201CThe 2012 Focus is so wildly different, we wanted to grab their attention and have them pay attention,\u201D says Beebe. That was also the intention, of course, of Fiesta Movement, an ambitious 2009 social media campaign from Ford to re-launch that model in the U.S. Beebe, however, says that Doug is not meant to be anything on the scale of that campaign.\nWhat the effort lacks in scope, though, it makes up for in content. The Doug campaign's humor is edgy in a way that a traditional TV campaign couldn\u2019t be. Ford is the latest marketer to take advantage of the web\u2019s new freedom to offer humor that wouldn\u2019t fly in a 30-second TV spot aimed at Middle America. Other recent efforts along those lines include K-Swiss\u2019s profanity-laden campaign for its Tubes sneakers featuring Danny McBride in character as Kenny Powers of HBO\u2019s Eastbound and Down and Hewlett-Packard\u2019s HP ePrint Live, a live YouTube comedy show featuring actors from the Upright Citizens Brigade.\nDisclosure: Ford is a Mashable sponsor."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2011/03/21/doug-ford-focus/>