Sunday Nights are Special on the ‘Ford Television Network’

Sunday Nights are Special on the ‘Ford Television Network’

By Dale Buss

Sunday evening television has become very popular with Ford executives. And no wonder – for them, it’s like watching slickly produced home movies.

But instead of chuckling at their kids’ or grandkids’ foibles, or watching their dogs catch Frisbees, the Ford folks get to see the Edge and the Mustang and the Escape starring in their favorite ABC TV shows: Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and Oprah’s Big Give.

Tonight (April 6) might be the most fun they’ve had all season. Ford has organized more than 1,100 “viewing parties” across the nation to gather charitably minded individuals for what it’s calling The Big Drive. Attendees will watch tonight’s episode of Big Give, help their hosts submit a plan in a contest to give away 10 Ford vehicles to worthy charities, and also be invited to test drive the hosts’ Ford vehicles -- which the company expects to translate into 10,000 to 15,000 test drives in one night.

“This is an opportunity not only to integrate with TV but also because the [promotion] makes sense for the whole giving-back thing,” Connie Fontaine, Ford’s experiential marketing manager, told AutoObserver . “It felt even better to be able to extend our partnership with Big Give and to be able to give back more to communities while being part of that show.”

Placement Performance

Ford’s marketing is in an interesting space right now. After a long drought in many segments of the company’s product line, the automaker lately has introduced enough appealing new vehicles and features to get back in synch with consumer preferences and demands. To fully leverage its more robust new lineup, Ford has been planning to introduce a comprehensive new marketing program called Drive One. It was formulated by Jim Farley, vice president for marketing and communications, who was lured away from Toyota last fall. Farley will unveil details of Drive One to industry press later this week in Las Vegas.

In the meantime, however, Ford has been using its TV money pretty effectively with its placement and advertising programs in three shows. By some combination of savvy and luck, the company has picked winning broadcast properties with which to associate. Its long-time relationship with American Idol continues to pay big dividends in consumer awareness, and Ford’s stress-free positioning on the reality-TV leader was the envy of its competitors during the three-month-long TV writers’ strike that ended in February. A couple of weeks ago, Idol entered its annual phase where Ford vehicles are cleverly featured in music videos using the show’s ever-dwindling cast of contestants.

Ford’s efforts on Sunday night have only ratified that the company knows what it’s doing with show relationships. Ford struck up a partnership with Extreme Makeover: Home Edition in 2004, providing vehicles that meet the needs of the extremely disadvantaged families ABC selects for the show. In one recent episode, the host also credited Ford for installing an in-home elevator system for a severely physically disabled child.

And Ford and Makeover also just announced a joint contest under which they will provide a $250,000 “green makeover” to the winning school. Called Educate to Escape, the contest also provides an opportunity for entrants – who can be students, parents, school staff or community members – to win a 2008 Escape Hybrid in a sweepstakes.

For the fifth straight season, Makeover ranks No. 1 in its Sunday 8 p.m. ET time period in the key adult 18-49 sales demographic.

Big Give, Big Presence

Now, the relationship with Oprah’s Big Give – which follows Makeover in ABC’s lineup -- has given Ford’s TV-placement experts a whole new and exciting playground. The premise of the show is that a handful of ordinary people are charged with donating lots of money each week in the most productive and and creative ways they can devise; one or two people who don’t live up to the challenge are eliminated by a panel of celebrity judges each Sunday. What the contestants didn’t know when they were participating is that the last person standing is awarded $1 million for himself or herself.

If anything, the participation by Ford vehicles in Big Give is much more dynamic and integral than in either Idol or Makeover. Each week, each contestant gets one of the same Ford models to drive all over whatever city is benefiting from the show’s largesse that Sunday, and viewers receive frequent glimpses of the exteriors and interiors of the vehicles and, often, their capabilities. Mustang and Explorer are among those that have been featured so far. And on one episode, Winfrey bid each contestant to give the Edge models they were driving to some needy and worthy recipient.

“It’s working out well for us,” Fontaine said about Big Give. “The integration with people doing good deeds also makes consumers more aware of the vehicle advertising we’re doing within the show. There’s a lift in consideration and opinion when people see the commercial that ties back to the product they just saw in the show.”

Ford will extend its relationship with Big Give by producing a 60-second “documentary” about the winning Big Drive house party, including the “give” itself, and ABC will air it during the show’s season finale on April 20.

Calling this evening’s event The Big Drive also is a way to provide a referential bridge between Ford’s recent TV marketing and the comprehensive approach that will be brought to bear against the company’s still-daunting marketing challenges by Drive One.

But Fontaine maintained there was no deliberate connection. The Big Drive “is meant to invoke nothing other than the opportunity to enable our advocates who already are out there – Ford owners [who are the house party hosts] – to have tools to be even better advocates for us.”

Photo from ABC-TV
1 - Oprah Winfrey from an early March episode of "Oprah's Big Give"

Michelle Krebs:  is Editor-in-Chief of AutoObserver.com. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.