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...

Ford has quickly and successfully built a major sub-brand out of its Sync infotainment systems featured in Ford and Lincoln vehicles. The trailblazing, industry-leading approach to mobile connectivity has picked up in just four years a cachet that GM's OnStar brand hasn't achieved in 20 years.

So, could Ford's surging EcoBoost powertrain sub-brand be next to get the star treatment from Ford? A company executive pondered the possibility for brandchannel.Continue reading...

Ford isn't media-shy; in fact, you might argue it has a thing for press conferences, which is how its new "Focus Doug" spokespuppet character was introduced.

It's now extending the media grilling experience to its broader range of models. The latest phase of its three-year-old "Drive One" campaign surprises first-time Ford buyers by being taken into a raucous "press conference" setting (instead of the focus group they were expecting) to answer questions about why they chose Ford.

The brand's US marketing director, Matt Van Dyke, discusses the strategy above; check out the new campaign below.Continue reading...

Ford last night introduced the third generation of its "Swap Your Ride" campaign on US TV. Introduced in 2007 with narration by Mike Rowe of Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs, it was revived last year with Rowe appearing on-camera. 

Lois Miller, Nielsen Automotive president, tells the New York Times that viewer recall for the 2010 ads scored 48% higher than for other automotive sales-event commercials that appeared during the same time period, an impressive result that spurred this year's return.

For the 2011 campaign, featuring 16 spots directed by Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Jessica Yu, Rowe is now seen interacting directly with a group of 32 actual consumers, who are shown talking up their week-long experience in a borrowed Ford vehicle "in a kind of feel-good get-together" swap meet, as the Times puts it.

It's mid-price jeans that may be on the cutting edge of an economic recovery that, at the moment, is meager at best. On Monday, an ad campaign (take a peek above) will break for Lee Premium Select, a line of men's jeans that will sell for around $42 a pair. That price point is between basic jeans and designer jeans.

The time seems to be right for mid-price jeans, as shoppers search for quality products that represent value. Lee Premium Select joins other mid-price jeans in the category, including Dickies, 1969 (sold by Gap), and Levi's.

The celeb endorsing the new Lee Premium Select line is Mike Rowe, who has been a veritable commercial powerhouse lately. Rowe, star of the Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs television show, is the spokesperson in a series of ads for Ford. He also pitches Caterpillar, W. W. Grainger, and Motorola.Continue reading...