As the Ford Motor Company prepares to celebrate its centennial in 2003, things are not humming along as smoothly as they could be at the house that Henry built. Last year, the company suffered $5.5 billion in losses, weathered a controversy over its Firestone-equipped Explorer, was forced to cut 35,000 company jobs worldwide, cut models, and then saw its stock take a dip in the fourth quarter of 2001.
The time was ripe for another Ford to come to the rescue. William Clay Ford Jr., the 44-year-old great-grandson of Henry Ford, and the company’s new chairman/CEO, is now a TV personality. He is currently appearing in a new image campaign, "No Boundaries" (also called "Ford on Ford"), that combines interview footage of Ford with images of Ford Motor Company cars, trucks and factories of the past, and glimpses of new models to come. Leslie Dektor of Dektor Film, Hollywood, directed Ford and the new car footage. The archival shots came from the archives of the Ford Motor Company, Dearborn, Mich.
Keith Salmon, of Hyena Editorial, Santa Monica, cut together the old and new images. Each of the :60 spots—"Family," "Legacy," "Built Ford Tough" and "Discovery"—opens with Ford talking about the company, its history, and/or its values, and then segues into an anecdote. For example, in "Discovery," the CEO discusses camping trips that his great-grandfathers, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, took with Thomas Edison and "whoever was president at the time." Accompanying the narration is grainy black-and-white footage of the men in the wilderness. Calling the Model T Ford the first sport utility vehicle, Bill Ford speaks of how the SUV allows for freedom of movement, connecting that freedom with his own philosophy about exploring the great outdoors as well as great ideas. That point is underlined by modern footage of Ford SUV models on the road, and people mountain climbing and white-water rafting. Another spot, "Family," ends with the overriding theme of the campaign, as Ford notes, with evident sincerity: "We are not just another nameless, faceless company. We’re a company that has a soul."
Good Image
Such sincerity was a selling point for employing Bill Ford as pitchman. The idea seemed a natural to Bruce Rooke, executive creative director at longtime Ford Motor Company agency J. Walter Thompson (JWT), Detroit, which created the campaign. "It’s one of those things that, when you know the brand, it’s common sense," Rooke explains. "You have a unique situation. You have a leader who has the DNA of the company in his veins. If you’ve got somebody like that, you should take advantage of it. It was the right time for him and the right format for him to come and introduce himself."
Rooke, the copywriter on the campaign, initially wrote discussion topics, but then found that the chairman/CEO was more comfortable—and effective—speaking off the cuff. Rooke and Jon Parkinson, senior creative director, took a video camera and shot nearly two hours of footage of Ford. "It was [technically speaking] amateur hour," relates Rooke. "I interviewed Bill and we videotaped it to see how the [on-screen] chemistry worked."
The ad execs compiled a reel of the interviews, which they tested in a variety of different markets, including Chicago, Los Angeles and Dallas. As a pitchman, Ford scored high. "People really embraced [the commercials]," says Rooke. "They were [seen as] more powerful than a lot of our product spots."
Rooke subsequently sought out a director to craft the actual commercials, searching for someone who was good with real-people work. That turned out to be Dektor, with whom Parkinson had collaborated over the years. "He’s done a lot of documentary-style work," Parkinson observes. "Leslie is very good at drawing out the best from people."
"We looked at a few others, but finally decided on Leslie," adds Rooke. "He has a blend of good-looking film and a nice touch. His strength is in bringing stories out of people. To get this sort of honest, no-BS message, Leslie is terrific."
To craft the spots, Rooke and his team used the demo reel as a starting point to come up with topics for each of the commercials. The subjects that Ford discussed in each led to the search for archival images. "We cut together different shots of Bill talking for sixty seconds," Rooke recounts. "Then we said, ‘What are the images that are going to bring that alive?’ "
Tom Robertson, senior producer on the spot, initially gathered the footage. "Tom put on the miner’s helmet and went searching," says Rooke. "[The] Ford [Motor Company] has acres and acres of great archival footage. The company has an archivist on staff, and Tom looked at it all and found material that helped bring the spots to life." Parkinson notes that they also shot footage of Ford employees at work and play in and around Detroit and Los Angeles. In all, more than 80 Ford employees were featured or assisted in the ads.
The task of cutting the material went to Keith Salmon, who had worked with Dektor in the past. Salmon also has experience on archival projects, including a series of PBS promos for the Ken Burns documentary Baseball. Since the campaign was a massive research project, Salmon was involved during the production phase. As footage came in—whether archival or from Dektor—he would digitize and archive it. "[The footage from Ford] was in pretty good shape," recalls Salmon, "considering how old some of it was."
Not all of the stock material was from the distant past: One shot in the ad "Built Ford Tough" came from a 1974 Charles Bronson movie, Mr. Majestyk. "We wanted to cue off [Bill Ford’s] opening line, ‘We always thought our trucks were tougher,’ and we found this great image of a yellow pickup truck flying over a hill [from the Bronson movie]," Salmon explains. "It showed tough Ford trucks."
In a complicated campaign such as this, Salmon’s early involvement was crucial. "They had an extensive shooting schedule," he explains, "so getting involved early on was important. There were so many shots and so many locations. The production was not linear at all. You don’t want weeks of shooting to stack up; you want to keep up pace with the production crew."
Salmon even went to some of the Los Angeles locations, meeting with Dektor to review material that had been shot and discussing how it would cut with archival footage. Music and sound design were equally important, since the spots had to add music and effects that would enhance Bill Ford’s comments—keeping them natural, without overwhelming what he was saying. "It was very layered work," Salmon says. "You had the new interviews, new original production footage, archival production, and original music." (Music for "SUV" was done at Peligro Music and Sound Design Co., Los Angeles; bicoastal Elias Arts handled music for "Legacy," "Family" and "Built Ford Tough.")
The process, from start to finish, took about eight weeks. Everyone was pleased with the final results. "If I’d had to do this with any other CEO, I don’t think I’d have gotten the same kind of material," opines Rooke. "What Bill was saying was different from the usual pabulum of corporate directors. That made my job easier. It was very satisfying that we could bring his words alive with the pictures."
