Doug, Ford’s latest spokespuppet.

I was surfing through Mashable when I saw this interesting article about Ford’s very original viral marketing campaign. Doug is a tweeting, facebooking, video-posting sock puppet, who has become Ford’s spokespuppet for the Ford Focus 2012. You can follow the story of how Doug became the spokespuppet through his YouTube channel, which also conveniently demonstrates the features of the all-new Ford Focus 2012.

Perhaps the most appealing part of the campaign is that you can actually talk to Doug through Facebook and Twitter, and he actually answers back, effectively becoming an excellent feedback channel for Ford. All these while generating hype for the vehicle launch of course.

I wonder though, if having such a cute puppet detracts people from the actual product itself.