Defying Expectations: Maverick Taking the Industry – and Social Media – by Storm

It may come as a surprise to see that?Ford Maverick is the most popular vehicle on TikTok , beating out exotic luxury vehicles and high-performance monsters. Still, its presence makes more sense and bodes well for the future of Ford when you look closer at the numbers and philosophy behind the compact truck’s creation.

Maverick debuted in 2021 as a new kind of pickup aimed at consumers who probably never even thought about buying a truck. It’s compact but capable and built for the do-it-yourself crowd – and pricing that started at around $20,000, helping Ford get back into the entry-level segment with a vehicle that offers more capability than the company’s previous entries and plays to our strengths as America’s truck leader.

The success of Maverick owes a great deal to the tough choice Ford made several years ago to exit the sedan business, said Jim Baumbick, Vice President, Product Development Operations, Cycle Planning and Internal Combustion Engine Programs.?(Editor’s note: Jim Baumbick previously served as Vice President, Enterprise Product Line Management, Strategy, and Planning, during the development and launch of the Maverick.)?Now Ford can’t make enough of the trucks to meet demand.

“Strategy is all about making choices,” he said. “Maverick wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t make the decision to get out of sedans and put the onus on the team to innovate. And if you’re going to compete, you need to play to win with a durable, authentic, and differentiated offering in the marketplace.?We could not just do another sedan.?The result of the team’s efforts have created a new segment, and are conquesting customers from Honda Civic, Honda CR-V, and Toyota RAV4 at record levels — over 60% of the customers buying a Maverick are new to Ford. That’s what playing to win looks like.”?

The Maverick project team got to work analyzing what type of vehicle could fill a white space, examining the evolution of trucks and their growth in size over the decades, as well as the sedan market the company had just vacated. Whether it was lining the interior to haul mulch, duct taping surfboards to the roof, or any number of other hacks meant to enable tasks unfit for a sedan, what they saw was customers making a host of compromises to make their cars fit their lifestyle – and their budget. They set out to create a vehicle with the interior space of a Fusion and the utility of a pickup truck – at the price point of a Focus, offering unmatched capability and value.

“It would be a superpower that no one could touch,” Baumbick said. “I knew that we had it. The only thing that kept me up at night was whether we could do it profitably. This was our shot at playing to win.”

A close second to the affordable price, said Trevor Scott, Maverick Marketing Manager, is its standard hybrid powertrain, which “is a real differentiator for us” with 40-plus mpg in the city and over 500 miles of driving range.

“Not only does Maverick present a versatile and capable truck at an extremely affordable price, , but you also get this unrivaled fuel economy,” he said.

Baumbick recalled seeing social media users bragging about fuel economy up to nearly 60 mpg. “They’re posting to see how much fuel economy they can squeeze out of ‘the little truck that can,’” he said.

Tim Stoehr, who joined the Maverick program as regional product line manager for truck about a year into development knew the company had a hit from Day 1. “It’s the best value in the industry – bar none,” Stoehr said, adding that demand for Maverick is similar to niche performance vehicles, with practically a full model year supply selling out extremely fast.

Prior to Maverick, Ford had been losing money on entry-level vehicles for decades, Baumbick said, but that’s changing with Maverick. “For as long as I’ve been with Ford, we’ve been trying to compete in the entry-level segment,” he said. “The goal was always to attract new customers to the Ford brand. What Maverick has done it’s a close second to the Mustang Mach-E for new conquests to Ford, and more importantly, they’re coming from Honda Civic, Toyota RAV4 and Honda CR-V. In the past, these were competitive conquest customers we could only dream of attracting to Ford, but with Maverick, we are playing to win”.

As Ford continues to bring new customers to the brand with Maverick, it presents an opportunity to keep those customers in the Ford family as their lifestyles evolve and they look for a new vehicle down the road.

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be a truck, but we want to keep them in the Ford family as their needs and lives evolve,” Scott said. “We have the full product portfolio for them, and we’re going to see a lot of that and hopefully evolve across the Ford showroom.”

Not only is Maverick bringing new customers to Ford, but they’re also so happy with their new truck that they would recommend it to friends and family, evidenced by the truck’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) – the highest of any Ford-branded vehicle through July. Net promoter scores are a metric used to measure customer experience and customer loyalty.

That sentiment carries over to social media, where Maverick recently topped a list dominated by sports cars and supercars with nearly 11 billion views. The research by Confused.com analyzed views from a range of media and consumer content on TikTok using hashtags mentioning each vehicle brand and model. The truck’s customizability and ability to personalize has a lot to do with it being a sensation on social media. Features like the Ford Integrated Tether System (FITS) slots throughout the cabin allow for 3D-printing and the FLEXBED provides a makerspace for any DIY project.

Another significant piece of Maverick’s success is due to that early legwork from the project team: having a good understanding of the truck’s target customer, Scott said. With that, Ford was able to lean into its Built Ford Tough truck leadership and leverage efficiencies in design and platform, as well as sharing of parts. But, ultimately, it all comes back to knowing your customers.

“With Maverick, all of the key stakeholders from marketing and design, to engineers and finance, everyone had a clear idea of who the customer is and what product we were trying to deliver,” he said.

Just like Maverick is reshaping the industry, the principles from the program are reshaping Ford. Maverick also represents new ways of working and operating, Baumbick said, recalling the dedicated team space and methods of working that unlocked the power of the Maverick team and brought the truck from idea to market faster than past programs. That effort is being replicated across future programs throughout Model e and Ford Blue.

“This is the template,” Baumbick said.