Projects: Ford Gets Touchy For Its Truth About Trucks

December 17, 2014 by Dave Haynes

This is a very nice deal … for someone.

As many as 1,900 Ford dealers in the U.S. may deploy a new Truth About Trucks interactive touch product-information kiosk in their showrooms – a set-up designed to help move more Ford F-150 trucks.

Much poking around has got me no closer to determining what vendors are behind this, though my bets would tilt fairly heavily on it NOT being a deal won by a traditional digital signage vendor (other than the display). Much more likely, an interactive agency.

Reports Edmunds.com:

The kiosks, part of a “Truth About Trucks” initiative at the dealership level, are being installed this week. They will be located in 1,900 Ford showrooms nationwide.

Consumers will be able to do a “high-level configuration” with the iPad-like kiosks, Ford F-150 Truck Marketing Manager Eric Peterson told Edmunds on Thursday.

“The kiosks will allow a customer to drive the experience,” he said. “If you have time in between service appointments, you can dig into the truck. You can guide your own experience and learn about what you are interested in.”

But Peterson said the kiosks are also “a great asset for a sales consultant” to help explain all of the details on the redesigned truck. In addition, they can be updated more frequently than posters and brochures.

The kiosks are mobile and can be taken to community events.

Peterson said a customer will not be able to actually buy or lease a truck using the kiosk, but that consumers can do comparisons with competitive vehicles and then e-mail the information to themselves.

At this point, the kiosks will only contain information about the F-150, not other popular vehicles, including the 2015 Ford Mustang.

Anybody have more on this deal?

There have been a few announcements lately from major brands – like 2,000 of these and 1,000 transparent Bud beer chillers/screens – that reinforce what I think is a fairly broad sense that the test deployments that typified most work with major companies, for many years, have been replaced by serious, real rollouts.

Yay.