Ford urges 'change' to the new Figo

Ford India has launched a new version of its largest selling car, the Figo, for which Global Team Ford has created a launch campaign. The campaign went on air today.

The TVC shows a young husband and wife walking out of a super market, with their trolleys full of households. The wife complains to her husband, that the entire responsibility of handling household chores has shifted to her, after their marriage. Her husband responds by saying,that she is over reacting and asks her for the car keys. The wife then says, if she can run the house, she can also drive. The girl continues her complaints against her husband in the car, while driving the Figo around. Her complaints continue, until her husband's phone rings. She answers the call, using the new Bluetooth feature in the car. That changes her mood, as the call is from a restaurant, to confirm their booking for a candle light dinner. Once the booking is confirmed, she looks to her husband and questions him again, as to why didn't he tell her about the dinner earlier. The film ends with the voice over introducing the new Figo.

Commenting on the creative brief given to the agency, Anurag Mehrotra, vice president, marketing, Ford India, said, "The campaign was thought of several months ago, when we started working on the creative for the Figo. We went back and looked at our 'Go further' brand promise. The manifest of that brand promise started, from a simple statement from Henry Ford. He said, 'If it ain't broken, doesn't mean you don't fix it.' Change normally is for the better. We call our TG for the Figo, 'Sandeep' - who is typically a 25 to 28-year old. He has just got married. He has just got a promotion too. So there is a lot of change in his life already. There is this slice of life, and that is the change in Sandeep's life. So we wanted to communicate to him, that change is a wonderful thing. We also wanted to communicate the change of the product. Through the film, we also wanted to reflect the change in the mindset of the consumer. Sixty to 70 per cent of the consumers are first time buyers. So there is a change in his life, to his stature."

Hari Krishnan, head, WPP Global Team Ford, said, "The phenomenal Figo proved to be a game changer for Ford after its launch, establishing Ford India firmly as a volume player, selling over 235,000 units in India and around the world. This gave us an opportunity to communicate the launch of the new Ford Figo while retaining its well-established proposition of 'Bursting with Substance' on the foundation Figo’s success and helped us in leveraging the ‘change’ to create all-round positive opinion towards Figo. Building on the theme of  ‘change is wonderful’ we decided to showcase parallels between the changes that are happening in the consumer’s life and the new Ford Figo. The Figo’s core target audience is aged over 25 years, who experience change at various levels – from their lifestyle to their personal and professional lives. The campaign captures a moment of a young couple’s life where the need for ‘change’ is amplified. And at the defining moment a key product feature resolves their disagreement and things are back to normal. In terms of campaign elements – we thought of breaking advertising stereotype and decided to get the lady behind the steering wheel, it’s a day in the life of real people doing real chores amplifying the brand’s ethos of 'real people, real experiences'. We believe that this story will bring a smile on people’s faces – and we have kept it real and believable."

Along with the film, the campaign also consists of print, digital and outdoor legs.
Anurag Mehrotra, said, "We have got a 360-degree campaign for the launch of the new Figo. Like all our campaigns, the digital campaign has two aspects to it. One, is for the PCs and Laptops, and the other is for mobile. The big bet for us in the mobile marketing space. What we are doing is, geo-fencing. We will fence a particular geographic area and anyone within five kilometres of our dealership surfing the net will be thrown out Ford ads. The other extension of that, is what we call our institutional sales. When I'm doing an activation in an institution, for example, the Infosys campus, the entire campus will be geo-fenced. Anyone surfing the net on that campus will be served my ad. I can make a creative specific for them. The second thing that we are trying out is the concept of the Layar app. No other company in the country is using this, and we are getting augmented reality content on all static mediums like print or brochures. This allows our users to download the app and play around with the car from the comfort of their homes. We are also creating an app for a virtual test drive. You can choose a city of your choice and using your mobile device, you can steer the car through these cities."

Credits:
Creative Agency: WPP – Global Team Ford
VP and senior creative director: Vijay Simha
Creative team: Sujatha Chakraborty, Nitika Parmar, Abhishek Singh
VP and strategic planning director: Antony Rajkumar
VP and client services director : Vijay Bhaskar
Account management : Jose Scaria, Siddharth Shrivastava
TVC Ddrector: Rajesh Saathi
Producer: Harish Nambiar
Music director: R. Anand
Media planning: Sushanto Biswas, Mindshare