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NEWS
Ford: Now we really need to change!
The clock is ticking on the Blue Oval's battle to appeal to private buyersThe launch of the farewell FG X Falcon and SZ Territory II has focussed more attention on Ford Australia's self-declared need to transform itself into a competitive retailer of passenger vehicles to private customers.
Ford was reliant for years on its privileged status as a local manufacturer and the fleet markets that generated for the Falcon and, more recently, the Territory SUV. But it now has less than two years to change the way it thinks internally and retails externally – before both its Broadmeadows and Geelong plants are closed and Falcon and Territory cease production no later than October 2016.
At that point Ford becomes another importer, competing with the more than 50 active brands that ship cars into Australia and fight for their share of one of the world's most competitive markets.
"As a business we have to change," Ford Australia marketing chief David Katic told motoring.com.au.
"We finally have to change, because the plant is closing.
"We can't rely on 'we manufacture in Australia and that's why we sell cars'. We have to find a point of difference. Over the next 18 months to two years and maybe for a bit after we close, we have to change as a business. We have to now," Katic stated
A slew of new cars and SUVs are on their way to Australia to bolster a lineup that apart from the Ranger SUV is struggling for buyer recognition.
Both the Focus small car and the Fiesta mini are down more than 20 per cent year-on-year while the Kuga and Ecosport compact and small SUVs are minor players in their segments.
Overall, Ford sales are down 6.2 per cent in 2014 and it is fifth on the sales volume list according to official VFACTs figures. Its annual sales tally has dropped every year for the last decade.
While much of that slide can be blamed on the shrinkage of the large car segment, Katic said Ford had also made a conscious decision not to chase rental sales volume, which delivers notoriously poor profit returns.
"You guys [media] only see the topline [sales] results. I know we have reduced our rental volume over the last 10 years by literally thousands of units," Katic said at this week's FG X and SZ II launch.
"We are going through an incredible transformation of our business. We are literally revolutionising some of the things we are doing. Some of those changes are literally state of the art.
"The reason we are doing that is because we want to build our retail business, because in the long term that will give us a broader more stable business, rather than 'hey great we had a great sales month last month because we sold 2000 rentals'."
The Ford new model rush includes an update of the Kuga SUV next month and the arrival of the new generation Mondeo in February 2015. A Focus refresh is scheduled for later in 2015 before the Australian-developed Everest SUV and updated Ranger arrives – probably around the Q3. Finally, the long-awaited Mustang coupe and convertible (pictured) are both slated for a very late 2015 local release.
Another part of Ford's strategy is to improve the customer experience. It has recently instituted a concierge system at its dealers, with about 40 members of its 200-plus network signed up so far.
Katic pointed to the recent 'Guess Who' campaign as an example of Ford's drive to change public perception of what has been known colloquially in the past as the 'Falcon Motor Company'.
The campaign showed images of the Mondeo, Mustang and Everest without disclosing they were Fords and challenged the public to nominate which car company made them. Of 100,000 respondents, 14,000 guessed brands other than Ford.
"There wasn't a Falcon in that campaign," said Katic.
"You could argue that campaign was all about future products. People asked us 'why wasn't Falcon in that campaign?' and that's because that ad was all about our new future.
"All those cars are new to our brand, or cars that customers don't know that we have – like Mondeo. And the goal of that campaign was to say Ford is not going away, it is actually growing and changing. And that campaign achieved exactly that."
Katic said he "loved" that so many people didn't pick the cars as Fords.
"I got to send an email to them saying it was Ford... so tick."
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Written byBruce Newton
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