When Marty Micallef, the football coach and president of the athletics booster club at Edsel Ford High School in Dearborn, is looking to raise money, his team usually turns to the standards: candy sales, pizza kits and concession sales during sports games.
But last week after school, he and his team held a different kind of fund-raiser that promised a bit more cash than usual: convincing would-be customers to test-drive Ford cars and trucks.
As part of Ford Motor Co.’s “Drive One 4 UR School” fund-raising program, Ford and its local dealers are kicking in $20 for every test drive that the students arrange. The school can raise up to $6,000 a year, and many schools are finding it’s an easy and fast way to raise money.
“We hope to make over $4,000,” Micallef said. “It would take weeks to make that in concessions.”
Student-athlete Stephen Eads, 18, who was working on the program and wearing a special Drive One T-shirt, said this was one of the more effortless fund-raising programs.
“Fun and easy,” he said, while sitting in a tent signing up participants. All he had to do was call a few family members and friends over age 18 and ask them to test-drive a car.
Dealers typically bring two of each car and truck to the program — excluding the popular Mustang — and require that participants sign a waiver and fill out a short survey. If every kid can convince a few potential customers to show up, the money adds up fast. Some dealers will also kick in an extra $10, for $30 for every test drive.
The event usually lasts a few hours.
Ford first tested the grassroots-marketing program in November 2007.
“We’ve had 15,000 test drives, with 100 events” nationwide, Gabrielle Senatore, a marketing program manager at Ford, told the Free Press. “We’re expecting 35,000 test drives with 150 more events” through the end of the year, she added.
So far, Ford has sold 250 cars and trucks through the program, and it is expecting to sell about 700 in all by the end of the year.
The most surprising thing about the success of the program is the 38% conquest rate, which is the percentage of drivers that Ford is getting out of competing brands, when it makes a sale through the effort. That’s much higher than other forms of marketing, Senatore said.
Because of that, Ford plans to roll out the fund-raising program to elementary and junior high schools next year.
“It’s about building community. It’s a real feel-good program,” Senatore said. “This is one of the more fulfilling programs. Schools are having their budgets cut, too.”
Source:Freep.com
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