Ford’s Drive One Could Be Right Campaign, Right Time
April 21, 2008

By Dale Buss

American consumers have had their long fling with raw power and size. They’re continuing to demonstrate that vehicle design is very important to them. And in a softening economy, there’s still nothing that speaks louder than price.

But Ford may be on to something with the new, omnibus Drive One marketing campaign that the company has been revealing in stages over the last few weeks – and plans to use for years. The effort is the first major manifestation of the marketing strategy that has been hatched at Ford over the last six months by Toyota émigré Jim Farley.

And in what it says both about Ford and about the state of the U.S. automotive market, Drive One may be able to create a fortunate synchronicity for the long-beleaguered OEM.

That’s because Drive One purports to scrape away all the superfluous messaging and all the trappings that attended automotive marketing during the long-running good times, by using actual Ford employees in advertisements that appeal in a very basic manner to the real needs and wants of vehicle buyers.

The way Farley has organized the messages in Drive One, those concerns boil down to quality, safety, technological capabilities, and “green” chops. Yes, there are hints in the new ads about style, fun, and power. But for the most part, the new Ford brand marketing campaign is serious stuff for a more sober era.

Early Reactions Good

To underscore confidence in the overhauled lineup of Ford vehicles and the sincerity of its intentions, Ford also is pursuing new ways to get American consumers to “drive one.” And it has even tapped into the thoughts and ideas of its dealers to put the campaign together and to carry it out.

“It’s a little early to declare Drive One a success,” admitted John Felice, general marketing manager for the Ford brand, to AutoObserver. “But the dealer feedback has been very positive, and the advertising has been well received so far.”

In fact, according to a CNBC web survey of 600 respondents conducted after the first Drive One commercial ran, 45 percent said they already liked Ford. Another 20 percent said the commercial didn’t change their minds about Ford. But another 20 percent said that the ad did change their minds – and 15 percent said that the campaign might.

Ford’s recent performance has shaken the confidence of American consumers and dealers. It produced a raft of forgettable vehicles over the last few years. Ford sustained a combined $15.3 billion in losses in 2006 and 2007. The company has laid off or bought out thousands of workers, blue- and white-collar, in an effort to catch up with diminished demand and expectations. It couldn’t get the CEO thing right until, perhaps, Alan Mulally came over from Boeing in 2006.

The company’s marketing campaigns were just as bad, their content and inconsistency accomplishing what Farley, group vice president of marketing and communications, summed up as “nothing” in a presentation to Ford’s board. Even Ford’s upbeat TV ads for the Ford Edge crossover vehicle introduced last year – “I like to live on the Edge” – seemed a tad indulgent against a rather lifeless broader context for the brand.

As a result of all of this, according to Ford’s internal research, the company’s consumer-approval rating stands at just 44 percent, below the 49 percent of General Motors’ Chevrolet brand – and Toyota’s 74 percent.  Consumers generally have moved to “apathy” about the brand, Farley told automotive journalists assembled last week in Las Vegas following Ford’s meetings with dealers to share the Drive One campaign.

Four Pillars

But now, even amid the depths of the worst overall car market in more than a decade, Ford executives are confident that they’re constructing a renaissance. Seventy percent of Ford, Lincoln and Mercury products will be new or what the company called “significantly freshened” by the end of this year. Several of these models are in very hot segments: Ford Focus in small cars, for instance, and Edge and Lincoln MKX in crossovers. And product quality has risen to top-shelf levels in the industry, according to objective measures.

The role of Drive One is to re-introduce consumers to the essence of Ford, hoping they’ll like what they see.

Its vehicle quality has become a major marketing asset to Ford, so Drive One is spotlighting both overall quality as well as specific advances -- such as how, in four years, Ford’s wind-noise rating went from second-worst in the industry to best-in-class.

The “Drive smart” theme is focusing on  “smart technologies” across Ford’s lineup that make driving easier and more enjoyable, highlighting things from “interior chimes and sounds that are pleasant” to seats that “fit perfectly across the back.

Safety isn’t an area where it’s easy for Ford to stand out from the rest of the industry, since most safety equipment on vehicles has been standardized by federal regulation. But Ford has chosen to emphasize safety attributes such as a side-curtain-airbag system that slips the air bags between the occupant and side window rather than deploying them at a 45-degree angle, as with conventional curtains.

And Ford is far from alone in asking consumers to “Drive green” with its vehicles. The company has flirted with strong environmental positioning over the last several years. As part of Drive One, it is emphasizing its new EcoBoost family of engines, which will use turbocharged direct-injection technology to deliver up to 20% better fuel economy, up to 15% fewer carbon-dioxide emissions and improved driving performance over bigger engines – on up to half a million Ford vehicles a year in North America, within the next five years.

A Look Inside

How to communicate this relatively dense series of messages in an entertaining and engaging, as well as informative, way? For one thing, “Drive One” is communicated by a central device to the campaign: Ford gives one of its new vehicles to a motorist who owns a competing product, for one week. Then the consumers get to give the car to one of their friends, and Ford films the exchanges for some of the ads.

(Mulally himself had been hinting at a test-drive emphasis for several months in speeches and other public remarks, which he frequently would wrap up by invoking the company’s long-ago slogan, “Have you driven a Ford …. lately?”)

Farley also wanted to use Ford employees talking in the ads and demonstrating some of the new technologies and improvements they were bringing to the vehicles. To help convey the “quality story,” for example, ad-agency people interviewed 115 designers, engineers and technical experts at several company facilities.

In addition to a handful of different 30- and 60-second TV ads – which were hatched last week on three popular programs with which Ford has close marketing ties: American Idol, Oprah’s Big Give and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition – the company plans to produce as many as 30 webisodes.

Dealers have become a crucial constituency for this ad campaign, Felice said. Many of the company’s 4,000-plus dealers are frustrated with the company, for good reasons. But some of them clearly are energized by Drive One.

“The four areas … match customer concerns 100%,” said Victor Benitez, vice president and general manager of Gus Machado Ford in Hialeah, Fla.

Selling Dealers in Sin City

Getting dealers on board was the objective of a huge effort by Ford at the meetings in Las Vegas. It included bringing about 60 engineers to Sin City from Michigan to meet with dealers and conduct show-and-tells with them about the four areas of emphasis of Drive One, as well as about the two new vehicles that are the subject of Ford’s biggest launches this year: the F-150 pickup truck and the Flex crossover.

For example, as if they were at a strong-man display at an amusement park, Ford dealers in Vegas could measure the force that it took to break bolts on Ford, Chevy and Toyota trucks. (The F-150’s were strongest, of course.) They could participate in a virtual-reality tour of the inside of a vehicle. Paint engineers patiently explained to dealers why Ford’s paint system is best-in-class.

Such was dealer enthusiasm, Felice reported, that some dealers were sharing their own ideas for marketing innovations back at their dealerships. “One told me that he was going to have an all-employee sales meeting to share the [Drive One] materials,” Felice said. “And another said that he’s going to start designating an employee of the month who will win the use of a Ford vehicle for that month – and then have the option of selecting a friend who’s driving a competing make, and let him drive the same Ford vehicle the next month.

“That kind of thing,” Felice concluded, “is going to be the most important metric of whether Drive One is working.”

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