My wife may not admit it often, but I am an integral part of her site. Usually, I’m in the background, from shooting video and editing to coding and design. And that is about all I have time for, with my own very demanding job, forget starting my own blog! But occasionally, I go to events and write about something that she wouldn’t otherwise have time to cover. So there you have it, disclosure in full; we are a team and quite often operate as a single blogging unit, throwing tasks and requests at each other when we need help! So when she was invited to the Ford event and had overlapping commitments, daddy blogger stepped in to cover.
If you were following along on Twitter last week, you may have noticed an abundance of activity related to the #FordTrends event “Forward with Ford” hosted on the Ford campus in Dearborn, Michigan.
Sometimes I go to these events not knowing what to expect. Are they going to tell us all about Ford’s business model or will they skip straight to their current cars? Am I one of a couple bloggers in a sea of traditional media (or worse yet in my case, the only male in a sea of Mommy bloggers)? All these questions were put to rest from the moment of arrival (and I won’t spend much time on this, because the real story here is what we learned). Hands down, this was probably one of the best produced media events I’ve attended and I’ve got to applaud their team for really pulling together such an amazing and informative meeting. As you’ll see in this and future posts, the effort and commitment Ford is showing toward a Greener future and embracing our connected lives is making me a believer in their product.
Photo Credit: Ford Motor Company
We started the conference with keynote speaker and author, Malcolm Gladwell. He spoke of paradigm shifts and how these shifts in our society over the last 50 to 100 years have literally up-ended our trends and perspectives on lifestyle. Our current paradigm shift: Consumers need and expect the brands that they interact with to understand them and meet their needs. They want a partnership with them, no longer just accepting the one way street of the traditional producer to buyer relationship. Take the Green living movement, for example, something that my wife and I have become increasingly passionate about. “We’ve chosen to put the environment over our own self-interested concerns,” Gladwell says. “The real impact on the world comes from the companies” [that produce everything we buy]. They are the ones that are truly empowered to initiate this change. So, as I learned at the conference, Ford gets it and I’m happy to say that they are listening! Look for more posts to come about what we learned on the trip and how Ford really is thinking forward with the consumer in mind, from greener cars to connecting your car to the cloud!
Take a look at this quick clip from Malcolm’s presentation:
Disclosure: No compensation was received for this post. Ford covered all expenses for the trip. All opinions are my own.
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