By Justin Hyde
DEARBORN, Mich., Aug 28 (Reuters) - With at least $200 million in advertising, Ford Motor Co. hopes to put a pitch for its new F-150 pickup in front of every possible buyer over the next few months, executives said on Thursday.
The world's second-largest automaker hopes the blitz, starting Friday, will drive demand for the 2004 model of the F-150, which has been the best-selling vehicle in the United States for nearly two decades.
The campaign will begin in earnest on Sept. 4 and saturate the first weekend of National Football League games with F-150 TV ads. One ad shows an assembly line of F-150s snaking through fields and shipyards, ending with the slogan "only one truck earned the right to be the next F-150."
Other parts of the campaign include tie-ins with auto racing, the TV show "24" and ads aimed at Hispanic buyers. It will also include a separate ad blitz by Ford's 3,900 dealers that will likely focus more closely on comparing the F-150 with competing models from Chevrolet and Dodge.
Steve Lyons, head of the Ford brand, said Ford would spend at least $100 million on launch advertising for the F-150, and its local dealer groups would spend an additional $100 million -- an "order of magnitude" larger than Ford's previous largest advertising launch for a new version of its Explorer sport utility vehicle.
While the launch advertising will peak over the next few months, Lyons said Ford has plans to continue F-150 advertising through 2004.
"I think we have a history of what was called launch and abandon," he said. "But this does go to a fairly new level."
Ford is still ramping up production of the new F-150 from its two U.S. plants, and hopes to have 20,000 in dealer inventory by Sept. 4. By the end of December, it plans to have 100,000 on the ground.
Other automakers are not just standing by. DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler arm and General Motors Corp. have boosted rebates on their pickups to as much as $6,000 in some markets, in an attempt to draw as many buyers as possible.
And Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. will launch its Titan pickup later this year, which many auto executives say is the first credible full-size pickup from a foreign automaker.
Ford is already playing some back-and-forth with Nissan. Executives said they were preparing to raise the towing capacity of the new F-150 to 9,900 pounds, 400 pounds more than the Titan.