Maybe one of the reasons Ford is falling behind to foreign auto makers is that they have the dumbest marketing ideas. Besides the Mustang ads and commercials, which are pretty darn good, can you think of any other Ford, Lincoln, or Mercury advertisment that has made an impression on you? I can’t either. Ford apparantly thinks that will soon change because they have hired rappers to help promote cars like the Mercury Milan and Lincoln Navigator. That’s right, soon you’ll see Kanye West (whoever that is) driving a Lincoln Zephyr in his soon to be released rap video. This of course will receive air time on MTV and presto the Zephyr will be ‘pimp’ amongst the hip-hop crowd. This has to work, thinks Ford and Ford’s ad agency, because when rapper Busta Rhymes’ song “Pass the Courvoisier” topped the charts in 2002, the stodgy two-century-old French cognac suddenly became a drink of choice for the bling-bling set.
Detroit now realizes that the reason they aren’t selling cars is because they need to be more relevant to the younger crowd – which they define as the “hip-hop” generation. An don’t think Ford hasn’t really studied this, because they have Ann A. Fishman, president of New Orleans-based Generational Targeted Marketing Corporation as a consultant. Ann, an old white lady from the suburbs, offers these words of inspiration; “I’m not going to buy a car just because Ludacris is in the commercial. But somebody else might.”
At this rate it won’t be long before Toyota is #1.
Read the entire story in the Detroit News.
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