Ford takes the Pepsi Challenge

By CLAIRE ATKINSON

From the NYT

Saturn Dealerships have Toyota Camrys and Honda Accords on hand for people to test-drive along with the Saturn Aura. And Ford Motor — which Toyota passed this year for second place in the American market — has staged an elaborate stunt in which dozens of people who had recently bought new cars from competitors traded them temporarily for Fords.

The fruit of that effort will appear on television and online starting today, when Ford introduces its new campaign “Swap My Ride,” a play on the similarly named MTV show. The commercials feature people who were asked to drive Fords for a week instead of the cars they had just purchased; Ford concealed its identity by creating a make-believe market research firm to conduct the effort.

“We wanted raw, unbiased opinions,” said Toby Barlow, co-president and executive creative director at JWT Team Detroit, Ford’s longtime creative shop. “We didn’t want them to think they were in a TV commercial. We needed a trick to get real objectivity and honest responses.”

Mr. Barlow said the idea grew out of a need to have real people speak for Ford instead of company executives. To that end, Ford is loading up the Web site FordChallenge.com with full-length interviews and blogs written by the participants.

In the first “Swap My Ride” spot, being shown today, a narrator explains the gimmick while viewers see glimpses of people’s reactions to the Ford vehicles. A woman who traded her Nissan Murano for a Ford Edge says effusively, “It has two sunroofs.”

A man quips, “I got bad news for the Suburban.”

And at the close of the 30-second spot, another man asks, “Can I keep this?”

Kim Cape, Ford’s communications manager, said that nearly all of the feedback from participants was positive. The campaign, she said, had originally been called “Car Swap,” but the title was changed to reflect the breadth of the effort, which included trucks.

“It’s about building consideration and driving people to the showroom,” Ms. Cape said.

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Ford has been struggling in a big way. Sales of Ford vehicles were down 12.5 percent year to date through July compared with the same period of 2006, a far greater drop than either General Motors or DaimlerChrysler, according to Autodata. Ford will report its August results today.

“Ford and other domestic products are just not on the radar screen for people,” said Ron Pinelli, president of Autodata. “Detroit has made large inroads into making better products. They need to convince customers to give them a look.”

The campaign is one of the first wholly conceived under the leadership of Alan R. Mulally, who became chief executive at Ford a year ago with a vow to shake things up. A spokeswoman for JWT Team Detroit said that Mr. Mulally was involved in overseeing “Swap My Ride” and that he has kept a hand in every campaign since his arrival last September.

While all the Detroit automakers are struggling to find ways to prove their relevance to consumers, the particular problem for Ford has been to define its image, make the definition stick and project its message to the public.

Robert Passikoff, president of Brand Keys, a consumer loyalty measurement firm in New York, said that Ford’s biggest marketing deficit is simply standing for something. “There is a brand association test. If I said Mercedes, you’re likely to say luxury; Volvo: safety; Toyota: reliability. With Ford, you’re likely to hear the sound ummm,” he said. “That is the sound of a brand dying.”

In a survey of customer loyalty and engagement that Brand Keys conducted in April, Toyota came in first, Ford ranked 11th, and Kia came in last, at No. 13.

Ford has suffered from high turnover in its marketing department and a series of diffuse and lackluster advertising campaigns. Two recent efforts also had reality elements: “Bold Moves,” which featured behind-the-scenes documentary footage of Ford, and “Team Tough,” in which Ford asked 12 veteran pickup owners to do the worst jobs they could in a 2008 Super Duty truck.

The “Bold Moves” marketing program, now a year and a half old, included commercials that ran this year under the “Ford Challenge” and “Fusion Challenge” rubrics. In those spots, as in “Swap My Ride,” consumers offer testimonials about product attributes and compare them favorably with rival brands.

As part of “Fusion Challenge,” Ford worked with two Hachette car magazines, Road & Track and Car and Driver, to orchestrate test drives in Washington and Los Angeles. The drivers rated the Fusion ahead of the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord.

Perhaps most memorable — though not necessarily effective — have been the ads for the Edge, a crossover vehicle. Some of the ads had the Edge driving along the edge of a building, and others, which featured two Edge owners comparing their cars with a BMW and a Lexus, were directed by the writer David Mamet. The Mamet ads, part of the “Ford Challenge” series, ran during “American Idol,” a show that Ford sponsors, in April.

The “Swap My Ride” campaign is “an evolution from the Fusion and Ford Challenge,” said Whitney Drake, a Ford car communications manager. “It’s about motivating people to learn more about our product and giving people the opportunity to drive it.”

JWT, a division of the WPP Group, has been filming the spots for the last eight weeks in Miami, Los Angeles, New York and Dallas, where participants were still not aware over the weekend that the Fords they were driving were part of a marketing project.

The production involved talking to some 80 people, who were driving borrowed Ford vehicles, including the Fusion, the Focus, the Mustang and the Explorer.

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The “Swap My Ride,” campaign will appear on a range of fall broadcast network shows, including “Desperate Housewives” and “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” on ABC, and “Late Show With David Letterman” and “CSI” on CBS. The spots will also appear during National Football League games and on “Bones” on Fox.

On cable, the ads will run on USA, Lifetime and CNN, with the first ad appearing for about eight weeks. Online, the campaign will appear on the Web sites of ESPN, Time, MSN, AOL and Yahoo. In print, the campaign will begin Friday in USA Today.

Ford would not say what it spent on the campaign. According to TNS Media Intelligence, Ford’s auto and truck divisions spent $747 million on advertising from January to May 2007 and $2.4 billion in 2006.