With few new cars, Ford sells green image

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In the auto business, there are few challenges tougher than marketing a brand that has few new cars to promote. No matter how good the current product, consumers like to see the latest stuff.

That’s the conundrum at Ford Motor Co., which after a solid run of product launches now faces a roughly six month gap without a significant new rollout.

The last 12 months at the Blue Oval have been an advertiser’s dream, with introductions of the Taurus full-size sedan, the Transit Connect van, the new Fusion and Mercury Milan mid-size sedans, the 2010 Mustang and the redesigned F-150 pickup.

The product barrage has helped Ford’s sales fare far better than most other automakers in a tough economy, and its share of the U.S. market has grown to 14.7%, compared with 12.1% a year ago, according to Autodata Corp.

But with the exception of the commercially oriented Super Duty truck coming in March, Ford won’t have a new car to crow about until the second quarter of next year, when the subcompact Fiesta arrives in the U.S., followed by Explorer and Focus launches later in the year.

For now, with competitors like Toyota Motor Corp. and General Motors Co. ramping up their advertising efforts with major campaigns in coming months, that means Ford has to get pretty creative when it comes to marketing in this dry season.

‘We definitely have some space to fill,’ said Matt VanDyke, Ford’s director of marketing communications.

He’s overseeing the automaker’s new advertising campaign, which begins Monday. An extension of the ‘Drive One’ campaign, it will attempt to attract buyers without being able to rely on tried and true pictures of brand-new vehicles.

Instead, the automaker will focus its campaign on customers, with advertising that features real Ford drivers as well as digital forays into Facebook and the like. It will also strive to appeal to what could be the auto industry’s most important stakeholder: the federal government.

A key component of the campaign, VanDyke said, will be a series of ads posted in the Washington, D.C., Metrorail system that highlight Ford’s fuel-efficiency and quality, as well as the green image of the automaker as a whole.

Running ads that read, ‘The Ford fumes-to-fuel system turns paint fumes into electricity,’ in a subway ridden by many people who don’t even own a car might seem like an odd approach for an automaker.

But VanDyke said that ‘with the spotlight on the industry like never before,’ such ads are a crucial way to get through to ‘the influentials in D.C, which are policymakers.’

In other words, without new cars to show off, and in an era when fuel economy regulations and low-cost government loans can make or break an autoamker, it’s crucial to get Capitol Hill on your side. ‘It’s a tactical messaging that we want to get out,’ VanDyke said.

Ford won’t reveal the cost of the campaign, which will run at least through the first quarter of next year. But a spokesman said it will be 10% to 15% greater than its ad spending in the third quarter, and will still include sponsoring ‘American Idol,’ NFL games and other more traditional venues.

As to getting through to the Obama administration, Ford may have an easier road ahead: The president already owns a Ford Escape hybrid.

-- Ken Bensinger