• by Karl Greenberg , March 2, 2007

With Ford's February sales down 8% versus the month last year and on the heels of a similar drop in January, Ford is creating a divisional campaign out of its "Fusion Challenge," launched earlier this year, in which consumers offer testimonials about Fusion's virtues over competitive vehicles.

Like its antecedent, the new "Ford Challenge" effort for its Expedition EL SUV and F-150 pickup pits them against the competition. While ads for the SUV and pickup will be fictionalized, the Fusion ads will serve up real testimonials from Road and Track magazine subscribers--who, at a Los Angeles event, test drove them along with competitive vehicles.

That approach mirrors the earlier "Fusion Challenge" campaign featuring testimony culled from an event for Fusion in December in which subscribers to Car and Driver magazine drove Fusion and competitors Camry and Accord, then talked about Fusion's competitive virtues in terms of performance, handling and styling. Ford said the effort was so successful--sales are up 24% year to date--that a redux was a no-brainer.

Year to date through February, Expedition sales are up 8%, although F-150 sales are down 13%.

The new broadcast, digital and print effort was launched with a national television ad, "L.A. Launch Challenge: We Did It Again," touting Fusion and broke on the Feb. 28 "American Idol," which Ford has long sponsored.

A raft of new competitive ads breaks this week:

~An "anthem" TV ad touting Ford's history with footage of cars like the Model T, and then urging consumers to take the "Ford Challenge"

~Two ads for the Expedition, promoting the vehicle versus Chevy Suburban

~A series of spots for F-150 starring new spokesperson Mike Rowe, who created and stars in Discovery Channel's "Dirty Jobs."

One of the new truck ads, which airs this weekend, has Rowe at a campground using the F-150 to tow an 11,000-pound trailer and demonstrating that it takes two trucks from the competition to pull the same load.

Ford says Rowe will appear in print and digital ads, while country singer Toby Keith, whose tours Ford has sponsored to promote the F-150, will continue to appear in Ford truck ads. A Web site will support with marketing offers, reviews and competitive information from MSN Autos, Yahoo! Autos and Edmunds.com.

The company also announced that it is backing the new campaign with deals on the three vehicles with discounts, rebates and deals.

Competitive advertising is tricky because it can implicitly suggest that the product is a segment underdog, and explicitly acknowledge that there's a redoubtable competitor from which the advertiser is trying to coax market share.

Alexander Edwards, head of automotive research for Strategic Vision, San Diego, says that the Fusion campaign has been so successful because it is specific and its endorsements aren't coming from Ford itself, but from by buff-book magazine subscribers, extolling the virtues of Fusion on camera. He says that because brand perception is so strong for Toyota and Honda, a blanket statement asserting superiority of Fusion over Camry or Accord wouldn't be accepted. "If, however, you go the route they been doing, which is--for example--that in areas of performance, the Fusion all-wheel drive is ahead of these others, it's easier to do," he notes.

But he warns that even though the ads for Expedition and F-150 are also specific in terms of features they are touting, they may be less effective because they lack the drama of live third-party endorsements. "It's the independent source who says, in this aspect this vehicle is something you should be considering. The more they take steps away from things that a potential consumer can easily connect to, the more difficult it will be to establish that level of trust."