Ford Sets Fusion Apart From Competition in New Ad Campaign

DEARBORN, MI – Ford’s new marketing campaign for the all-new ’13 Fusion seeks to demonstrate to car buyers how the midsize sedan stands out from the competition by relegating rivals to the background.

For the Fusion print campaign, Ford flew in Chinese artist Liu Bolin, who is known for creating photographs in which he camouflages himself seamlessly into his surroundings.

Bolin and a group of Hollywood studio painters worked for hours to capture details of the scenery in the ad, including brick sidewalks, shrubbery, lamp posts and buildings, onto competitive vehicles parked on a Hollywood set.

“We could have done it digitally, but we thought doing it by hand would make a difference,” Toby Barlow, chief creative officer for the Team Detroit ad agency, says at a media event here. “It’s stunning.”

The print ads will run in conjunction with a digital campaign called “Random Acts of Fusion,” in which television’s Ryan Seacrest travels the country performing acts of goodwill in an effort to generate buzz for the new Fusion.

Ford says the digital campaign already has resulted in 520,000 potential customers visiting the Fusion website to virtually build and price a vehicle.

Amy Marentic, Ford group marketing manager, says the original goal was to motivate 300,000 people to build and price a Fusion. “The whole idea before the Fusion pre-launch was to get customers to go in and spend five to 10 minutes ‘spec-ing’ out a vehicle. We knew we needed scale.”

Three television spots also will debut this month during a mix of primetime network programming and sporting events.

The first spot shows Fusion as the only car on the road as other vehicles become invisible, and the second one features a Fusion driving off a cliff, which Ford says demonstrates the one thing the car can’t do.

The final spot shows other cars driving backwards while the Fusion moves forward toward its destination.

Ford is putting considerable effort into marketing the Fusion, which Marentic says is the auto maker’s third-best selling nameplate behind the F-Series pickup and Escape cross/utility vehicle.

“Depending on the month, the midsize-sedan segment is 16%-17% of the total (U.S.) market,” she says. “The competition is fierce and it’s important we try something different.”

Sales in the Middle Car segment, as defined by WardsAuto, jumped 25.6% through the year’s first 10 months to 2,572,777 units. However, Fusion deliveries barely moved the needle, up just 0.36% to 197,833 in the period and plunging 31.9% in October to 11,734.

Marentic says Fusion sales were down due to insufficient supply, noting only 9,000 units currently are in inventory. “We are about 25% of what we need with inventory,” she says, adding supply should be at an ideal level by year’s end.

The ’13 Fusion is offered with a choice of five different powertrain configurations, including hybrid and plug-in hybrid versions.

Sales of the new sedan began last month. The average turn rate is nine days for models equipped with internal-combustion engines and four days for hybrids, Marentic says. The plug-in Fusion goes on sale early next year.

“We’re also seeing our retail order bank at 20%-25% hybrids, and those are customer orders,” she says. “That was surprising to us. We expected 10%-15%.”

The multiple powertrain options, including a 2.5L normally aspirated inline 4-cyl., a 1.6L direct-injected turbocharged EcoBoost I-4 and a 2.0L EcoBoost I-4, could lead to customer confusion. But Marentic says Ford has worked out a strategy to clearly define the powertrain offerings.

“We have the 2.5L on base and mid-level series, and the 2.0L is exclusive to the (high-trim level) Titanium and the hybrid,” she says. “So we try to make it not complicated but also give customers a choice.”

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