SELLING THE "BLACK BOX" AT FORD MOTOR COMPANY (R)

"I couldn't find a speed limit I liked in America."

Perhaps you’ve seen that commercial.

(Or maybe that’s what the Pac 10 replay official was watching when he was blowing two pivotal calls in last Saturday’s football game between the University of Oregon and the University of Oklahoma)

In that spot, one of the few and deep-pocketed -- a scruffy owner of a $60,000+ (including all additional dealer "greed" mark-ups) 2007 Ford Shelby GT500 -- boxed up his 500-horsepower steed and parked it on a container ship, seeking a quick blast down a German Autobahn.

(Not that the virtually unavailable GT500 really needs any advertising to sell, but then that commercial is about as close as 99.9% of Ford’s long-suffering performance customers will be getting to a new 500-horse Shelby in the "FORDseeable" future. But if you need more, see -- www.svt.ford.com. Just don’t fixate on how Mr. Scruffy is going to get his expensive GT500 off that six-inch-tall shipping pallet . . . . Now back to our story)

Or maybe you saw the one where the loyal son presents his dad with a restored Ford F-1 pickup, just like the one pictured in a faded photograph on the wall of the family homestead.

Or the spot in which an impulsive Ford Fusion owner pays for some dry cleaning of a stranger as a "pickup" gimmick. (Think the opening scene to "Fatal Attraction 2007" and you’ll get the idea of where this one’s likely to go . . . .)

Or perhaps you’ve heard the firestorm created by the spot chronicling a "liberated" soccer mom wheeling a Ford Freestyle and dumping her latch-key ex at the curb of his pitiful bachelor pad after a weekend of "quality" family time with the kids. (Who says Ford isn't pro-family . . . "in all its [disfunctional] forms?")

These commercials are part of Ford Motor Company’s "Bold Moves" ad campaign. George Rogers, CEO of the Detroit office of JWT (FoMoCo's ad agency for about 60 years), explained the theory behind it to the Automotive News this week. According to JWT, "A mass-market TV spot isn't the best place to educate potential buyers about 500-hp V-8s or towing capacity."

Really?

Instead, the "Bold Moves" campaign relegates the pesky automobile to a mere supporting role -- A prop in these bantam dramas. In fact, there’s almost nothing unique to any Ford model in these spots. After all, some potential stalker who goes around buying dry cleaning for strangers could just as easily be driving a Honda or Toyota as she could be whipping Ford’s Mexican-built, Mazda-engineered Fusion, couldn’t she?

Rogers also explained that all those technical details about brake rotor sizes, torque curves, curb weights and the number of cup holders can be better consigned to the back of an internet site for the wonks who will go to the trouble of seeking out such "inside trivia."

Don’t hold your breath waiting for a "Bold Moves" ad featuring some "car guy" geek bragging about how his Five Hundred has more rear seat room than a Toyota Camry.

"Don't think . . . Just light'em up, Kids," as another "Bold Moves" Mustang GT spot demonstrates.

In theory, why burden the buyers with such details about the features, functions and benefits of the product -- or even cerebral FACTUAL COMPARISONS between Fords and competing products -- when one can tell generic stories about how "cool" imaginary Ford owners are? Thus, the product is just a "black box," sold by the affective "boldness" of the make-believe customers FoMoCo places with it.

Rogers reportedly cribbed this philosophy from the Volkswagen of America "Drivers Wanted" campaign he directed at Arnold Worldwide.

But hawking something other than the product is not a new idea. Ever since the days of Cadillac’s famous "Penalty of Leadership" ad ( http://www.ciadvertising.org/studies/student/99_spring/interactive/manzano/mac/penalty.html) and Ned Jordan’s breezy "Somewhere West of Laramie" prose on the otherwise forgotten Jordan Playboy, copywriters have sometimes designed campaigns to sell intangibles about the marque or model instead of "sweating the details."

Here’s how such campaigns sounded eighty years ago . . . .

"SOMEWHERE west of Laramie there's a bronco-busting girl who knows what I’m talking about.
She can tell what a sassy pony, that’s a cross between greased lighting and the place where it hits, can do with eleven hundred pounds of steel and action when he's going high, wide and handsome.
The truth is-the Playboy was built for her.
Built for the lass whose, face is brown with the sun when the day is done of revel and romp and race.
She loves the cross of the wild and the tame.
There's a savor of links about that car-of laughter and lilt and light-a hint of old loves-and saddle and quirt. It’’s a brawny thing - yet a graceful thing for the sweep o' the Avenue.
Step into the Playboy when the hour grows dull with things gone dead and stale.
Then start for the land of real living with the spirit of the lass who rides, lean and rangy, into the red horizon of a Wyoming twilight."

(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Jordan)

Now THERE’S A "LASS" WHO DOESN’T NEED TO BUY ANYONE’S DRY CLEANING!

EPISODE 12: WILLIAM CLAY FORD, JR. AND ANNE STEVENS TALK ABOUT "WINNING ON SUNDAY"

Speedzzter has been hard on Chairman and CEO Emeritus William Clay Ford, Jr. and his minimal on-camera contributions to www.fordboldmoves.com

But in Episode 12, Bill Ford gets a large share of "face time."

Episode 12 is a strong argument for Ford Racing. Bill himself proclaims at a Ford racing rally that racing is the essence of Ford.

Of course, this is the same Bill Ford who assured everyone that he wasn't looking to replace himself as CEO. Right, Alan Mulally?

Episode 12 also recounts the oft-told story of Henry Ford and Spider Huff’s 1901 Grosse Pointe Match race with Alexander Winton (whom the Mustang marketing manager oddly suggests was the "John Force" of his day . . . who knew that John Force was a automobile manufacturer). Ford's success in the match race lead to the investments needed to start FoMoCo. (One gaffe in Episode 12 is footage of a steeply banked board track shown during the retelling of the "Sweepstakes" vignette. Henry's famous 1901 match race took place on a flat, unpaved horse track)

Episode 12 also features passionate quotes from some of Ford Racing’s NASCAR fans about technological transfers, Ford ownership, and how at least one of them wouldn’t even go to the track if Ford didn’t field entries (that guy must not have watched many races during the 1970s).

Team Ford Racing’s Number One fan, Bill Ford’s cousin, and FoMoCo Board member Edsel B. Ford II even argues for the conventional wisdom of "Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday!"

Of course, Episode 12 steers clear of how Edsel’s dad killed the World-beating "Total Performance" and "Muscle Parts" programs in November 1970, directly contributing to FoMoCo's malaise in the 1970s and Chevrolet’s unchallenged ascendancy in the "stock" and grassroots forms of American automobile racing (a fact Chevrolet won’t let us forget in trumpeting how many NASCAR manufacturers championships they won over the past three decades– even though it was by default during the first half of that span)

A guest column sidebar by NASCAR-phobic Autoextremist Peter M. DeLorenzo rips into the whole "sell on Monday" idea by pointing out how the retro-tech, funny-car NASCAR "Fusions" have virtually nothing in common with the slow, boring Fusions ordinary civilians can buy.

Of course, DeLorenzo seems to miss the whole point.

While NASCAR racing probably does build corporate morale and may, in fact, yield some process and technological benefits for FoMoCo engineering, NASCAR participation is about indirectly selling "the black box." The race cars are merely flashy, noisy, expensive, crash-prone "black box" props to the HUMAN drama. And it’s the inherent excitement and "coolness" factors of the humans participating that FoMoCo seems to believe will rub off on the Blue Oval’s products.

In The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe broadly reviews our popular fixation with the idea of "single combat." From the days when the biblical lad David took slew the giant, to when Col. Chuck Yeager slew the demon that lived on the other side of Mach 1, and up to the present day, naratives which put individuals in deadly "single combat" against some hoard or superior force of nature tend to grab the human psyche. And although auto racing is a team sport, it's the "single combat" of the lone driver, battling "coolly" against both the hoard of other drivers and the ever-present risk of death, that becomes the Bold drama holding the attention of millions.

By sponsoring the conquering "hero" and providing him or her some of the tools necessary for victory (even if those tools are substantially different than what it sells all those street-bound Walter Mittys out in the Heartland), FoMoCo can bask in the reflected glory of conquest.

Moreover, FoMoCo wants to take advantage of the "brand loyalty" which racing fosters.

Seen in that light, Racing is not unlike the "lifestyle" dramas in Ford’s "Bold Moves" spots.

And similarly, it doesn't really make a whole lot of difference that the unobtainable 500-horse GT500 on that container ship dock isn't really very much like the ordinary "secretary's car" V6 Mustangs actually and affordably on sale down at your local Ford dealer.

Or so the theory goes.

Episode 12 also features one of the last "Ford" appearances of Anne Stevens, FoMoCo COO for the Americas. Stevens proclaims that FoMoCo will never abandon racing participation. But then the next day, Stevens abandoned FoMoCo for retirement, effective October 1. In a candid interview with the Detroit Free Press, Stevens opined "The company has too many layers, the company is too bureaucratic, and it takes too long to get things done."

It would seem that motor racing–which inherently requires lean, nimble, empowered organizational responses–hasn’t taught FoMoCo all that it could have.

But let’s all hope FoMoCo’s commitment to motorsports lasts longer than Stevens’s commitment to FoMoCo.