[extropy-chat] Dead - But Not Unemployed

[Olga Bourlin]

A digitally revived Steve McQueen, who died in 1980, will be reprising the
character of Lt. Frank Bullitt in a commercial promoting the redesigned and
retro Ford Mustang.:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/15/business/media/15adco.html?oref=login

October 15, 2004
ADVERTISING
Ford Brings Back Steve McQueen
By JEREMY PETERS and DANNY HAKIM

EARBORN, Mich.

DETROIT is exhuming another face from the past to pitch its cars to a new
generation.

A digitally revived Steve McQueen, who died in 1980, will be reprising the
character of Lt. Frank Bullitt in a commercial promoting the redesigned and
retro Ford Mustang. The ad is part of a heavy push by the Ford Motor Company
to convince Americans that a new crop of cars coming out this month are
worth buying on their own merits, not because of a $5,000 rebate or
zero-interest financing.

To make its pitch as loud as possible, Ford will spend $150 million to $200
million this quarter on advertising, the most ever in a quarter. Commercials
will be focused on three new vehicles from the Ford division: a new large
sedan, the Ford Five Hundred; the Freestyle, a cross between a station wagon
and a sport utility vehicle; and the redesigned Mustang.

The Ford division also said yesterday that it would jettison its somewhat
defensive advertising theme, "If you haven't looked at Ford lately, look
again," which it has been using in commercials for cars like the beleaguered
Taurus sedan. The successor slogan is "Built for the road ahead," which
echoes the "Built Ford tough" tag line of its truck campaigns.

In one of the "Road ahead" commercials, a 60-second spot called "Cornfield"
that will start showing in November, the revived McQueen swaggers out from
behind a field of cornstalks and jumps behind the wheel of a 2005 Mustang.
Other ads in the series will start running on Sunday.

The "Cornfield" commercial follows the recent resurrection by General Motors
of Harley Earl, its long-dead design chief, in a series of Buick commercials
that sometimes also included Tiger Woods. Buick has since moved on, changing
campaigns for 2005 and no longer using the actor who portrayed Earl.

McQueen, who played the title character in the 1968 film "Bullitt," is "an
icon," said Tom Cordner, co-president of J. Walter Thompson USA in Detroit,
which developed most of the new Ford division campaign, and "the car's an
icon," he added, referring to the Mustang. Thompson, part of the WPP Group,
is the longtime agency for the Ford division.

The stakes are considerable for Ford. In the last decade, the company's
automotive earnings have come almost entirely from sport utility vehicles
and pickup trucks, but those markets are now under assault from the likes of
Toyota and Nissan. This year, all the Big Three domestic automakers have
rededicated themselves to designing passenger cars that they hope American
consumers might get excited about.

"People would acknowledge that we have been extremely strong in trucks,"
Steve Lyons, president of the Ford division, said in an interview yesterday.
"You'd have to say the car side would not be our strong suit."

In fact, passenger cars make up only about 32 percent of the company's
sales, down from 42 percent in 1998.

Over all, Ford's market share in the United States this year through
September has declined to 18.4 percent from 19.5 percent, according to the
AutoData Corporation.

"Their market share has fallen to levels not seen since the 30's, and most
of that decline is in the passenger car area," said David Healy, an analyst
at Burnham Securities.

"To bolster their North American profitability, they can no longer depend to
the extent they have on the F-150 and, to a certain extent, the S.U.V.'s,"
he added.

Mr. Lyons said Ford was hoping that the new vehicles would increase its
total retail volume next year by 15 percent.

"With these new products, the only way to go is up," he said.

And what better way to breathe a little life into your sagging car sales
than with a dead actor?

"Cornfield" begins with a farmer using a bulldozer to build a racetrack in
his cornfield. He then pulls a new Mustang out of his red barn, takes it for
a spin and stops along the road at a checkered line. McQueen, as Frank
Bullitt, emerges from the cornstalks. The farmer tosses him the keys and the
Bullitt character gets into the car and tears off down the track.

Ford had to negotiate first with the McQueen estate and then with Warner
Brothers, which released "Bullitt," over the rights to use the character's
likeness. The company is not saying how much it paid. Ford also had to find
a look-alike of McQueen to pose in the commercials and then digitally impose
the character's icy gaze onto the body double.

Ford said yesterday that it would also spend more money than it has before
on nontraditional forms of advertising like event sponsorship and
integrating products into TV shows, which it sees as a way to fight the
commercial-zapping made possible by digital video recorders like TiVo.

Pursuing that strategy, Ford will sponsor a commercial-free episode of the
NBC series "American Dreams." Though it is set in the 1960's, the new
Mustang and Five Hundred will make appearances, apparently in a
flash-forward sequence.

The Mustang will also take a bow on "The O.C.," the teenage drama on Fox,
where it will be driven by the waifish lead actress, Marissa Cooper. And
Jennifer Garner will also drive the Mustang on the ABC spy show "Alias," in
which all manner of Fords have already appeared.

"This is not product placement," said Ford's advertising manager, Rich
Stoddart. "Product placement is easy. You give someone a box of soap and
say, put this on the shelf and make sure the camera sees it. This is totally
different."

Ford will also take on reality TV in giveaways that will be part of the ABC
series "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."

In one clip from the show that Ford executives played at the campaign
kickoff event yesterday, a family whose home is being extremely made over
opens the garage to find a Ford F-250 Super Duty pickup. The father can
barely contain himself.

"I think it's safe to say he was more excited about the Super Duty than he
was about the new wallpaper in the living room," Mr. Stoddart said.
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