Ford rolls out new advert marketing campaign amid industry-wide uncertainty

Ford on Wednesday rolled out a brand new promoting marketing campaign that the corporate stated will mark a “basic shift” in its branding technique — and comes because the auto {industry} offers with main uncertainty.

The automaker’s new technique, titled “Prepared, Set, Ford,” goes past vehicle-first promoting, Ford stated, and as an alternative focuses on the individuals who purchase its vehicles. It entails 4 basic guarantees: functionality, ardour, neighborhood and belief.

The auto {industry} is dealing with an important crossroads as firms take care of President Donald Trump‘s tariffs and an general client pullback in spending. Regardless of uncertainty with varied sectoral tariffs, Trump’s auto tariffs have remained roughly unchanged, with a 25% tariff cost on imported vehicles and auto elements.

That timing, Ford Chief Advertising and marketing Officer Lisa Materazzo stated, is intentional.

“The auto {industry} is within the midst of historic disruption. We’re lucky within the sense that Ford has an unbelievable 122-year historical past to leverage,” she stated. “So due to that, we felt like there isn’t any higher time to double down on our dedication to our model and our shoppers than now.”

Materazzo stated the corporate engaged in intensive analysis forward of the rollout, discovering a standard theme of uncertainty and anxiousness from shoppers as a consequence of a spread of things, together with the political local weather and the economic system.

“The opposite factor we discovered is that buyers are surprisingly optimistic and resilient, particularly once they really feel empowered, and so they’re in search of manufacturers that assist them navigate this uncertainty,” she stated.

Ford has lengthy championed its American roots and declared it is the “most American automaker.” That id is now essential to the automaker’s model, Materazzo stated, and builds on its “America for America” marketing campaign that supplied worker pricing to all shoppers shortly after tariffs have been initially introduced.

The brand new technique goals to leverage Ford’s iconic model whereas concurrently signaling that the automobile firm is coming into a brand new period, Materazzo stated. It’ll unify all of Ford’s world manufacturers for the primary time in many years below the brand new marketing campaign, permitting the corporate to “symbolize ourselves very persistently across the globe,” she added.

“By Q1 of 2026, all of our world markets shall be in market with ‘Prepared, Set, Ford,'” Materazzo stated. “Nearly all of them will try this by This fall of this yr.”

The primary rollout of the advert is kicking off together with this week’s Thursday Night time Soccer recreation, because the automaker aligns itself with the NFL season, one of many largest moneymakers for ads main as much as the Tremendous Bowl.

In the course of the Covid pandemic, the auto {industry} pulled again considerably on promoting and advertising budgets because it handled provide chain points left firms with out sufficient automobiles to promote. Many automakers returned to promoting in the course of the NFL season final yr as car stock ranges returned to extra regular ranges.

Even because the macroenvironment alerts uncertainty, Materazzo stated the corporate is targeted on persevering with to ship on its legacy and spend money on its model.

“The {industry} is in the course of a transition proper now. I do not assume all manufacturers will survive, however I believe people who not simply survive, however thrive, would be the ones who acknowledge that one in all their most respected property is their model,” she stated. “And when you do not spend money on your model, you are actually disadvantaging your enterprise for the long run.”