Ford India showcases Chennai-built EcoSport in Hyderabad

HYDERABAD : Going further with its largest product experiential campaign EcoSport Urban Discoveries, Ford India, today showcased its Chennai-built urban SUV EcoSport to customers in Hyderabad. The product was displayed today at the EcoSport Urban Hub at Inorbit Mall in Madhapur, Hyderabad.

This EcoSport Urban Hub, part of the 12-city campaign roadshow will excite and engage consumers at the popular shopping mall this weekend of April 12-14, 2013. Ford India had kicked off the multi-city roadshow with the simultaneous opening of EcoSport Urban Hub for the first time on March 15, 2013 in New Delhi and Mumbai, followed by Gurgaon, Navi Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Kochi and Jaipur over the past weekends.

EcoSport Urban Discoveries Campaign launched on March 1, 2013 by Ford India has unlocked the first-of-its-kind opportunity for a hundred consumers to drive the urban SUV starting May 2013 and share their product experience with family and friends. The selection of consumers for the drive will be done by a neutral jury basis following or votes and other participation criteria enclosed in the campaign platform www.ecosportdiscoveries.co.in

Joginder Singh, president and managing director of Ford India said, “We are excited to go live with our game changer EcoSport at the EcoSport Urban Hub as we bring our urban SUV closer to our consumers in Hyderabad. We have taken a step further by giving them an opportunity to drive and experience the Chennai-built EcoSport out in the open and share their product experience with their family and friends. With this experiential drive commencing in May we will go further in meeting their aspirations.???

Ford India also announced that the EcoSport line-up will include four trims, giving consumers a choice of three engine options with options including manual transmission and an automatic transmission option in petrol.

Ford will, for the first time, offer an SUV with its award-winning 1.0L EcoBoost turbocharged engine. EcoSport will be the first vehicle in its segment to feature a voice enabled interactive system better known as SYNC, which the manufacturer has co-developed with Microsoft.

Following weekends, the EcoSport Urban Hub will be strategically revealed to consumers in Pune and Kolkata in a phased manner, and they will have the opportunity to see, touch and feel the upcoming EcoSport in this modular urban environment in high footfall malls in each of these cities.

“We thought we should leverage EcoSport Urban Discoveries as a socio-technological tool to take advantage of the vast reach of the internet so that we could tap into India’s proverbial method of effective communication, which is word-of-mouth, and the EcoSport Urban Hub will be an enabler to this kind of engagement???, said Vinay Piparsania, executive director, Marketing Sales and Service, Ford India.

The EcoSport Urban Hub is a modular interactive zone contained inside the atrium of a mall featuring an urban skyline as a backdrop and a glass floor embedded with objects that will be reminiscent of places in a city. The Hub also includes an educational 3-D Ecoboost engine holocube which is a revolving and projected display of the engine’s construction to familiarize visitors with the revolutionary engine technology. A SYNC simulator in the form of an engaging driving game and music selector will give users a sense of the functional simplicity of the voice enabled interactive features.

The EcoSport will be on display for visitors to explore the exterior and interior of product in this modular ‘urban’ environment that reflects the positioning of the urban SUV. Those interested in the EcoSport can register themselves at the EcoSport Urban Hub and they will be kept informed about the progress towards the market launch.

“The EcoSport Urban Hub will help us engage with and educate people about our upcoming EcoSport, and with this approach we would like help customers take the right purchase decision.??? Vinay Piparsania added.

EcoSport Urban Discoveries in the form of www.ecosportdiscoveries.co.in is a social platform that has the potential to reach out to a vast population and contains the tools for real people to share their real experiences with their friends, family and communities

“Consumer curiosity and eagerness regarding the EcoSport adds to the SUV’s importance and relevance to India’s urban population, and we will get the opportunity to go further in expanding the Ford showroom with an exciting product and offering our customers a great ownership experience,??? concluded Joginder Singh.

About Ford in India
Established in 1995, Ford India is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ford Motor Company, a global automotive industry leader. Ford India manufactures and distributes automobiles and engines made at its modern integrated manufacturing facilities at Maraimalai Nagar, near Chennai. The company’s models include the Figo, Ford Classic, Endeavour and the All-New global Fiesta.

Ford’s operations in the country also include Global Business Services, comprised of Ford Business Services Center and Ford Technology Services India. Located in Chennai, New Delhi and Coimbatore, these units support Ford globally in the areas of IT, accounting and finance, financial services and automotive operations support, global analytics and engineering services. Ford’s businesses in India employ 10,000 hard-working, dedicated men and women.