Breaking ad: Can Cranston fix Ford’s stale image issues?
Company pins hopes on celeb’s swagger
There’s a new face of Ford Motor Co.
The automaker struggling with fading fortunes and a sinking stock is seeking to get its swagger back with a series of ads debuting this past weekend featuring Bryan Cranston, the star of the awardwinning series Breaking Bad, and his wry, no-nonsense demeanour.
Using the slogan “Built Ford Proud,” the commercials push back on the popular notion that Silicon Valley is on the verge of delivering driverless and flying cars. A commercial for the Escape sport utility vehicle takes a not-so-subtle shot at Tesla Inc. While the compact crossover has never been shot into space, as Elon Musk’s Roadster was earlier this
year, it “proudly sits in over 2 million garages,” Cranston, 62, says in a craggy baritone.
Another spot mocks tech gurus’ penchant for pontificating about the future, while Ford has been building vehicles for 115 years. “Let the other guys keep dreaming about the future,” Cranston says, driving through the desert in a pickup with the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black” playing in the background. “We’ll be the ones building it.”
Ford has failed to keep today’s models fresh and floundered in its attempts to get Wall Street interested in its plans to shape the future of transportation.
After profit fell by more than half in the second quarter, chief executive officer Jim Hackett announced an $11 billion (U.S.) restructuring that will take as long as five years. Moody’s Investors Service has cut the carmaker’s credit rating to one level above junk. Its stock trades at the lowest since November 2009. The ads by Ford and Wieden + Kennedy (creators of Nike Inc.’s Colin Kaepernick commercial) will reach 90 per cent of American adults, according to the automaker. Fans of the AMC series Breaking Bad might see Walter White, the meth-dealing high school chemistry teacher, but Ford sees Cranston as an authentic voice.
“He has a kind of swagger to get down to the essence of things, and we think that’s really important nowadays,” Jim Farley, president of global markets, told reporters this week in Las Vegas, where the ads were first shown to Ford’s dealers.
One of the ads mocks Silicon Valley’s attempts to create flying cars by showing a racing Mustang muscle car going airborne over a hill.
Cranston dryly intones: “Contrary to what you’re about to see, the Ford Motor Company does not condone, nor build, flying cars.”
“Ford just seems to be at its best when it can make a comeback,” Farley said. “This week is the first step.”