I know it's a less-than-glorious way to spend a first post, but I have to respectfully disagree with you on this.
I'm 27. I have a full time job (as an agency-employed person at Ford, coincidentally), a very active social life, and a boyfriend that lives 4.5 hours away. I talk on the phone less than 100 minutes per month, but I average 3,500 text messages per month. I'm on Facebook and Twitter and various web forums, and I access them all via my iPhone if my laptop's not nearby. I'm 27, educated, make enough money to afford a car payment, and am active socially and online. Simply put, I am the buyer that every car company drools over if I send as much as a longing glance in the direction of one of their products. (If that sounds a bit narcissistic, I apologize)
I've been at Ford for over five years now, and I drive a 2006 Honda Element that I bought brand new. Why is that, you might ask?
I wasn't a true believer. When I bought my Element, even after having been at Ford for 2.5 years at that point, I saw no reason for me to buy a Ford product. There simply wasn't a product to fit my lifestyle. The Escape struck me as a mommy-mobile with no room for my bikes and practically non-existant availability of the manual transmission. The Fusion was a great car even then, but I was leaving a sedan and wasn't interested in another sedan. The Focus at that point was one of the blandest econocrapfests on the road. The Ranger was completely impractical unless I got the 4x4 with the gas-guzzling 4.0. The Element, on the other hand, fit me and my lifestyle like a glove.
How was I even aware of the Element's capabilities? It wasn't TV marketing. Sure, I saw a couple of print ads in the bike magazines I read, but that wasn't it either. The internet, however, played a huge role. When I found the Element Owners Club forums and saw people with bikes in their Element and was hearing about how people were doing dog rescue or were able to fit a washer and dryer into their car and saw owners extolling the stereo and the handling and the like, I was hooked, and I knew I had to really look at the Element when it was time to buy. Word of mouth played a huge role, as one of the guys I used to play kickball with had an Element, and he filled me in on how great it was. The Element had a great buzz around it, unlike any of the Ford products at the time.
I'll be completely honest-if someone my parents' age (late 40s) were trying to tell me to buy an Element, I'd be a bit dubious. If Honda were on the TV advertising the crap out of the Element like they do with their transportation appliance known as Accord, I'd be a bit dubious. I don't watch hardly any TV, I ignore internet ads to a point where I don't even know what was advertised before I click the button to get rid of the ones my pop-up blockers can't kill. If there's not a good buzz behind something, chances are I won't know about it, or at the very least I likely won't have any further motivation to investigate it further.
And that's what the Fiesta Movement is all about-trying to create that buzz to cut through all the other ad clutter that people my age and younger simply ignore. At the risk of sounding rude, I sincerely believe the Fiesta Movement would lose all credibility with a demographic that Ford Motor Company desperately needs to connect with in order to survive if it were to have a bunch of 50-somethings and white-hairs at the forefront.