• Detroit Free Press , Wednesday, September 3, 2008 10:15 AM

A campaign breaking today for the Ford Flex across an ever-growing number of media platforms -- TV, print, iPhone, Xbox, Dish Network and Yahoo, to name a few -- will be far more youthful and edgy than marketing for family vehicles of the past.

The Flex, which was developed as a family-hauler alternative to a minivan, will be showcased at night, when parents go out and do fun things, says Toby Barlow, executive creative director and co-president of JTW Team Detroit, Ford's ad agency. "We decided to focus on the emotion of driving it," he says. Indeed, Ford has created a 30-page brand bible that calls for a more youthful and emotional direction.

The highlight of the campaign is Ford's advertisement in the first mass-produced print product to use electronic paper display technology, which Esquire is experimenting with for the cover of the magazine's 75th anniversary edition. The animated -- but silent -- Flex advertisement will appear on the inside page of the magazine's cover, but only on copies sold at newsstands.

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