Ford ‘#celebrateFocus’
How do you get consumers to show some love?
The Ford Focus was quick to gain fans when it was first introduced in 1998. Fast forward 16 years and with 12 million owners worldwide it was still the #1 car in the world. With a new model set to release, we needed to stir-up some love for this hardworking wagon.
Our research told us that real stories from real people could create the cut-through we were looking for.
With a car that’d been a part of people’s lives as long as this one, we knew there must be some great tales to tell. We wanted to showcase the real love for the Focus that was out there. So, we created the #celebrateFocus campaign, which encouraged Focus fans to share their real-life stories; the good, the bad, and the ugly.
We collaborated with two illustrators to bring the thousands of responses we received to life. Mr Bingo created quirky shareable social posts about fans’ car pet names, dream car features, and film fantasies. Tim Goodman illustrated fans’ favourite Focus memories directly onto one of the new cars – creating a great social film and a ‘live content piece’ that toured Europe.
All-in-all the campaign roused a lot of good feeling for the Focus, and showed Ford’s fun side.
Campaign overview film
We kicked-off the campaign on social, posting fun facts about the Focus and asking owners for their stories and memories
Illustrator Mr Bingo’s responded to weird and wonderful suggestions from fans, giving the campaign a down to earth, humorous feel
We then took the best memories we’d gathered and, with illustrator Tim Goodman, transformed a new Focus into a piece of art
109,000
new Ford fans, a 289% increase
2,700,000
tweets and 79,000 likes
1,400,000
views of the campaign films on YouTube
The illustrated Focus toured Ford sites across Europe, even staring at the Paris Motor Show