All accounts from last week’s JD Power’s Automotive Roundtable in Las Vegas suggest that Ford Group VP Jim Farley laid out a really compelling picture of how a major manufacturer looks at its opportunities in digital and especially social media.

Alex Snyder, in Dealer Refresh, quotes Farley as saying that TV gets 50 percent of its budget; Digital gets 25 percent; “Experimental” gets 15 percent; and Paper/Magazines get 10 percent. All Ford’s advertising is now derived from things learned in social media, said Farley.

“Social media is such a strong influence on Ford that it actually plays a huge role in product and aftermarket development,” noted Farley, according to Snyder’s account of the talk. “Their advertising strategy is simply to ‘get people talking about us, not us talking about us.’ ”

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