Lincoln

Lincoln uses Sparta Social Networks to help make dreams come true.

The Business Challenge

Lincoln, a division of the Ford Motor Company, was launching an integrated marketing campaign as part of its efforts to revitalize the brand with more contemporary vehicles. The goal of the campaign was to attract a younger demographic. Use of the web by car companies has become more and more important, but Lincoln was setting out to create a new benchmark for consumer involvement and participation.

The campaign associated the Lincoln brand with inspiring dreams, rewarding achievements, and celebrating success. Lincoln 's online community, mydream.tv, was to provide Lincoln with a means to make an emotional connection with their customers and help these customers achieve their goals and ambitions in a very practical way. Lincoln advertising and contests would be included as well to drive sales for the new car line.

The site would offer consumers tips and resources on how to make their dreams a reality and provide a place to go where people could talk about their dreams and aspirations, access resources, and strategize with experts to help achieve those dreams.

Lincoln needed the right combination of software, services, flexibility, and responsiveness from its Social Networking solutions provider to make its dream a reality. Specifically, Lincoln was looking for

•  A solution that could launch quickly to coincide with the introduction of the new car models and integrated campaign

•  A unique design that would reflect the community's goals and sophisticated design requirements yet preserve the Lincoln image and brand

•  A scalable platform to handle project community growth and evolving requirements

•  The flexibility to host the online community themselves, adhering to Ford's strict guidelines for IT security and management

•  Function-rich software to support the site's vision as it evolved

The Sparta Solution

Sparta delivered a highly scalable, function-rich, flexible online community to Lincoln . Taking advantage of Sparta 's social networking software and comprehensive services, Lincoln launched mydream.tv in less than a third of the time it would have taken them to build the community internally.

Sparta 's social networking platform delivered the scalability and flexibility Lincoln required, while Sparta 's “market-smart” services mapped design requirements, business requirements, time-to-market requirements, functional requirements, and integration requirements to the site's implementation and support plan.

Mydream.tv is a feature-rich, online social networking community with more than 50 dreams. The site informs, entertains, and offers users the chance to connect with others, motivating them to accomplish their goals, return to the site, and encourage others to do the same. Users can submit their own dreams or access existing dreams, connecting with others who share the same ambitions. The site is also interactive, allowing users to chat with dream experts, blog with like-minded dreamers, and view videos of those who have accomplished similar goals. Web links next to each dream are included to help people get started.

Sparta 's social networking experience and design and technical expertise enabled Lincoln to include the advanced community features they desired. For example, each dream topic area on the homepage enlarges or shrinks dynamically based on popularity, and the display and behavior of interactive flash advertisements changes based on the content of the page on which it appears.

With the help of Sparta Social Networks, Lincoln is now building relationships with a targeted and motivated online community, helping dreams become a reality for its members, as well as the car company.