The auto industry is going through massive changes, with new technology, new products and new competitors and, “there’s a belief not all brands are going to survive this transformation,” said Ford’s Chief Marketing Officer Lisa Materazzo.
That’s why she and her team have decided it’s time for the automaker to launch Ford’s first global marketing campaign in more than a decade. The simple tag line – “Ready Set Ford” – is designed to “focus on the emotional lifestyles” of the customers the company serves around the world, Materazzo explained during a background briefing earlier this month.
It launches in the U.S. today, September 10 during the widely watched Thursday Night Football broadcast and, in the coming weeks, will be pretty hard for any potential customer to miss in digital, social, print and broadcast outlets targeting the U.S. market. The campaign will then roll out across the more than 100 markets Ford operates in worldwide.
Badass Drivers
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The Ready Set Ford theme is designed to solidify the automaker’s image at a time of vast changes in the automotive market. There’s the shift to electrified vehicles, the dawn of autonomous driving and the arrival of new competitors, such as China’s BYD and Geely, among other challenges. Ford wants to be seen as a leader and the campaign, it explains, “will highlight ‘badass’ drivers, creators, and ambassadors” showing what makes Ford vehicles worth owning.
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The campaign is designed to focus on Ford customers, rather than on its products, and will target “three distinct lifestyles,” Materazzo explained:
- The “doers and creative” owners of vehicles like the F-Series and Maverick pickups;
- “Boundary-pushers craving speed and performance” with products like the Mustang; and
- “Explorers drawn to discovery,” with models like the Bronco, Ranger and Expedition.
Spending Big
Ready Set Ford will become the dominant Ford marketing theme worldwide and while the automaker doesn’t officially release its numbers, Ad Age and other sources estimate the carmaker spends more than $2.5 billion a year in advertising alone worldwide. Other marketing activities are believed to take that figure to somewhere around $4 billion.
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The Ready Set Ford tagline will be used in all but four markets, despite the differences in language. But while it will dominate Ford’s marketing message, that doesn’t mean it will be the only thing potential buyers see, Materazzo told Autoblog. Think of this as an umbrella campaign. Customer tastes and preferences can vary markedly from one country to the next. Going off-road has become a wildly popular pastime in the United States, for example, but it’s not something many motorists do in, say China, Singapore or Hong Kong. So there will still be plenty of marketing messages targeting local trends. The new campaign will be backed by other marketing efforts, including the automaker’s decision to rename its performance arm Ford Racing.
No Escape
Wherever you live, if Ford products are sold there, “You will see our content everywhere” by the first quarter of 2026, said Materazzo. And it won’t be “launch and leave,” another way of saying a short-term effort. Much like old taglines, like “Have You Driven a Ford Lately?” and “Quality is Job One,” the Ready Set Ford campaign is likely to last for years.
Don’t expect to see Ford directly focus on the subject of quality in its new campaign. That’s a definite sore spot for the automaker right now. Quality problems have been adding up to billions of dollars in repair costs and Ford already set an all-time annual record for recalls just through the end of June. Fixing these problems has become a top priority for Ford CEO Jim Farley and, for her part, Materazzo insisted “we’ve already made great improvements in quality….though, no doubt we have more work to do there.”
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The ultimate goal of Ready Set Ford is to get the company’s products on the radar for potential buyers in a highly competitive industry – and to keep it there. The good news for Ford is that, at least in the U.S. market, Ford clearly connects. According to a study released this past month by S&P Global Mobility, the Blue Oval brand has the highest loyalty rate of any automotive marque operating in the U.S. In the most recent period it studied, S&P found 58.9% of owners trading in a Ford bought another one of the automaker’s vehicles.
