Ford sales inched ahead in September largely due to two increasingly important sub-brands: the 2013 Ford Escape, and EcoBoost engines.

Both Escape and EcoBoost rose with a bullet during the month, with sales of the newly overhauled, iconic utility vehicle rising by nearly 15 percent over last year's sales of an earlier generation of the nameplate. It was the best-ever September for Escape.

And about 90 percent of Escapes sold came equipped with an EcoBoost engine, the Ford technology that allows a turbocharged, direct-injection four-cylinder engine to yield the same power — with improved mileage — of a six-cylinder of yore. In addition to traditional marketing, Ford is promoting the 2013 Escape with a branded entertainment project: "Escape My Life," a web series now rolling out on the models' YouTube channel.Continue reading...

Ford has been putting "real people" in many of its ads for a while now, including the "Swap Your Ride" subjects hobnobbing with Mike Rowe and the actual Ford owners who were peppered with questions by fake reporters in the brand's controversial staged press conference stunt.

Now positioning their own workers as real people, the brand's marketers are now putting put actual Ford employees into ads promoting the 2013 Ford Escape crossover-utility vehicle. The campaign aims to show how Ford's people are demonstrating their internal drive to "Go Further," the tagline centerpiece of Ford's new global brand positioning. Ford also is launching a new web-only video comedy series behind the nameplate as well.

"We don't have a blanket strategy now to always do real people in ads, but in a lot of cases we're finding it does work," Scott Kelly, Ford's communications manager, told brandchannel. "We look at it campaign by campaign. Where it does work, it's all about being as authentic as possible."Continue reading...

Recall all that pre-launch marketing that Ford so carefullly laid for the 2013 Escape? The branded entertainment experiment that was the Escape Routes prime-time TV series on NBC; the Spanish-language TV commercial during the NBA Finals featuring the Miami Heat; and, in its latest promotional stunt, measuring the model's interior in ping-pong balls (56,778, in case you were wondering).

Well, Ford may need all of the interest and goodwill generated by those marketing gambits, and a lot more, to get past the fact that the automaker just announced the second recall in as many weeks for the crucial new version of its venerable SUV. It also raises the issue that when it comes to brand recalls, customers do recall recalls, as Toyota found out the hard way.Continue reading...

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Bank of America swings to profit.

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DirecTV finds unlikely friends in dispute with Viacom.

Ericsson earnings plunge on economic slowdowns.Continue reading...

Airbus and Boeing walk fine line about global airliner demands.

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Ford funds parties featuring Escape to combat hunger.Continue reading...

Every automaker, like many politicians, wants to earn the favor of more of the burgeoning population of U.S. Hispanics. So when Ford got an unexpected opportunity to strike a blow in that regard, it took the chance — and created a moment, just as Nike struck when the Heat was hot. TV viewers of NBA Finals on ABC, between the Miami Heat and Oklahoma City Thunder, may have noticed that, during the last two games, the network ran a 30-second Ford spot for the new 2013 Escape utility vehicle — in Spanish, with English subtitles.

Network ad execs had noticed the huge penetration of Spanish-speaking viewers watching the first two games of the Finals, about one-sixth of the total audience — mainly concentrated in the Miami area. So they asked Ford if the brand wanted to take advantage of the exposure to a Hispanic audience in a mainstream, DVR-proof, primetime broadcast. Ford clearly viewed it as a coup and made a move that also seemed sort of unprecedented.

"They told us it was the highest penetration they were ever seeing of Hispanic viewership of a [non-soccer] sporting event in the U.S.," Matt VanDyke, Ford's director of U.S. marketing communications, told brandchannel. ABC and ESPN, he added, "were interested in testing and learning and observing how the audience would respond to in-language Spanish advertising and asked if we wanted to test and learn with them."Continue reading...