By Steven Symes 
There’s no doubt the heat is turning up in the auto industry, so Ford has launched a new global marketing campaign. Called Ready Set Ford, it’s supposed to realign the automaker’s activities and energize its fanbase, with the hope more will gravitate to the Blue Oval.
The EV market share in the auto industry is about to tank.
Plenty of fluffy marketing speak is packed into the official press release detailing out the plan. Cutting through that, we see a few fundamental differences in approach Ford says it will adopt moving forward.
One is that Ford is gearing itself more as a lifestyle brand than a seller of model lines. That probably has you rolling your eyes or wrinkling your brow. It’s quite the departure from what we’ve seen before, but it involves targeting different people’s lifestyles and showing them how Ford products compliment that.
You see this to an extent in automotive marketing, with some brands doing it more than others. European brands have especially excelled in this area. But so have non-car brands like Apple. Will that work for Ford?
Ford is emphasizing its more performance-oriented models moving forward as well as its involvement in motorsports. In other words, gone are the days of marketing that focuses on regular people movers or basic work trucks.
We’re interested to see how this plays out in the long run. First of all, we want to see how Ford executes on these different stated goals. After all, talk is cheap and actions are golden.
But we’re also curious how the public will react to the shift. Will people notice? If so, will their perception of Ford improve? Or could this have unintended consequences?
It’s no secret the Blue Oval has been dealing with an array of difficult challenges lately, from a record number of safety recalls to interesting statements made by the CEO.
That’s why a turnaround is needed, but it remains to be seen if this attempt will work or blow up.
Images via Ford