kansaiwalker1

Mercury gets 'Lucky' with film

Indie-flick style campaign for the Ford brand cuts through the marketing clutter.

By Eric Mayne / The Detroit News


If Ford Motor Co.'s Mercury brand were a movie, critics might suggest it's a little short on character development. To that, Mercury says, "Meet the Lucky Ones."

In a bid to reach a new generation of buyers who tune out blatant marketing pitches, Mercury created "Meet the Lucky Ones," a film about the intertwining and sometimes bizarre lives of 10 people.

The film debuted in five episodes last year on www.mercuryvehicles.com. It was passed out last week in DVD format to people at the 2005 North American International Auto Show and will be shown Wednesday at the Sundance Film Festival.

With a droll tone reminiscent of HBO's "Six Feet Under," the film explores the lives and attitudes of four men, four women, a 12-year-old girl, a Scandanavian exchange student/house boy and a frog named Cucumber.

The Mercury Mariner small SUV makes cameo appearances, but there's no mention of the vehicle or the Mercury brand.

"That was by design," said Linda Perry-Lube, Mercury's eBusiness marketing manager.

The campaign's goal is to entertain first and sell second. "We wanted to be engaging," Perry-Lube said.

It isn't the first time film has been used to build buzz about a brand. In the early 1990s, Taster's Choice aired a lengthy series of TV spots that depicted the evolution of a romance -- one that began over a cup of coffee.

The characters' up and downs became water-cooler conversation and raised the company's profile. More recently, upscale car brands Jaguar and BMW have used high-concept films to build interest.

Mercury is hoping it reaches media savvy, independent consumers who don't respond to "getting hit in the face" with a sales pitch, Perry-Lube said.

Mercury needs to draw new and younger buyers to capitalize on a number of new models, including the Mariner, Monterey minivan and Montego full-size sedan.

A new midsize sedan, the Milan, and Mariner Hybrid will arrive this fall, followed by a Mercury version of the Ford Freestyle crossover vehicle.

"We're not bringing all these products in to sell the same number of units that we did before," said Darry Hazel, Lincoln Mercury president.

Mercury's U.S. sales fell to 194,000 vehicles last year from 202,000 in 2003.

Nearly 500,000 visitors visited Mercury's Web site and clicked on the pages that feature episodes and character profiles. About 40 percent of those checked out information about the Mercury Mariner.

Of these visitors, 58 percent are female and 26 percent are between the ages of 21 and 34. The average Mercury customer is about 60.

But when Web surfers view "Meet the Lucky Ones" or examine the characters, the effect can be jarring. None of the characters have movie-star looks. Some, like Alan the Laundromat coin dispenser, and Mike, the banjo-playing dentist, border on creepy.

"It's the independent film sensibility," Perry-Lube said. "Short films must be edgier to have the desired impact."

Mercury and its ad agency, Wunderman Detroit, spared no expense in developing an avant-garde flavor. Ed Herbstman, the creative force behind HBP's "Da Ali G Show," was enlisted to write the script.

In naming it one 2004's best marketing campaigns, Adweek magazine said "Meet the Lucky Ones" has "the authentic quirkiness of an indie film without over-pushing product."

Matt Demmer, general manager of Jack Demmer Lincoln Mercury in Dearborn supports the idea.

"I like it, personally," Demmer said. "It's different and that's what's attractive."

You can reach Eric Mayne at (313) 222-2443 or emayne@detnews.com.



http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosins.../C01-67107.htm

charliemike

What is the point of Mercury anymore?

Just a Ford with chrome? Okay ... This isn't 1950 ... There needs to be more distinction.

Ford management is a mess ... Fortunately, they still have good engineers.

SpeedyV6

I think there's a market for a decent performing large sedan. Just look at the Chrysler 300, Dodge Charger and Magnum. In the long run it's forseeable that people can transition away from minivans and suv's back to cars. Affordable large sedans are still one of the few things American carmakers cam well.

kansaiwalker1

From this week's autoextremist.com

by Peter M. DeLorenzo



Desperate For Hipness, Automotive Marketers Tend To Forget One Irrefutable Truth.

Detroit. Since the Academy Award nominations were announced yesterday, and the Sundance Film Festival has recently come to a close, I figured it would be appropriate to zero-in on a category of automotive marketing that seems to crop up now and then, and is referred to as being "amazing" - that terminally overused word for everything in our culture that's merely adequate - sort of like the Brits' overuse of the word "brilliant," if you know what I mean. The category I'm referring to is Internet films, a type of communication that automotive marketers can't seem to get enough of and that seems to continually attract their undue fascination. The most famous, of course, were BMW's star-studded films of a few years ago, which garnered a lot of media attention and won a lot of awards for the ad agency and the directors involved. Whether it not they actually sold a BMW is highly debatable. Oh, I know uttering a negative word about the hallowed BMW films is tantamount to heresy (after all, Guy Ritchie got a Corvette commercial out of the deal, so it worked out for him), but other than the media hype, what was the net-net result of it? The best I can tell, several already semi-famous directors got even more famous on BMW's nickel, and then several people who might not have ever been afforded the opportunity got to go to Cannes and pick up an award - got to go to Cannes and pick up an award.

The latest entry into the category is Mercury's web marketing campaign called "Meet the Lucky Ones," consisting of 50 short (about 30 sec.) "indie"-looking films that the automaker has recently started to release over the last several weeks. The films feature what Mercury calls a "quirky and somewhat dysfunctional family," and Mercury execs are quick to point out that Mercury vehicles are barely mentioned. Of course, there's a car giveaway involved and some other things, but you get the idea.

One preview of this campaign, and you quickly realize that, "Meet the Lucky Ones" is yet another example of a car company becoming infatuated with "buzz" and media attention, sometimes to the detriment of the big picture, which in the end, as pedestrian as it may sound, is to ultimately move the metal.

In Mercury's case, when they're starting out literally at ground zero, with such little awareness (or interest for that matter) in their products or their brand, it's easy to see why they would embrace anything and everything different, because like the song said, "when you ain't got nothin' - you got nothin' to lose." But there's a fine line between reaching out and trying something different to capture that hip "buzz," and going completely off the deep end into a world that offers little return - other than the initial media attention.

Automotive marketers often forget the one irrefutable truth about dealing with the film industry (ad agencies are often guilty of the same thing), and that is that the only reason film industry people give the slightest damn about the car business and its marketers is that they're an almost bottomless source of money. And because of that, film industry people have grown to become master manipulators of automotive marketers and their agencies. The lure of the film business is like crack to automotive marketers. It's a glamorous business that they would have no access to normally, but because of their financial clout and their desperate need to be perceived as hip, culturally current players, they freely enter into agreements with film industry types - whether it makes sense or not.

After all, when a peripheral "star" director or producer calls an automotive marketer's idea or product "amazing" - it's almost impossible for that marketer to retain a clear head about the proceedings. The "hip-by-association" quotient multiplies dramatically after that, and by then it's too late - a deal is struck that is usually wildly favorable for the directors/producers and vaguely advantageous for the automotive marketer, although it's hard to pin down why, exactly. In the case of Internet films, the marketer can point to "hits" and website traffic, but beyond that they have little or nothing to show for it.

On the one hand, I applaud Mercury marketers for at least embracing the mindset of welcoming different marketing ideas and avenues. On the other hand, however, the "indie"-looking "Meet the Lucky Ones" Internet film thing will prove to be nothing but a giant beat-off that results in some initial media stories talking about Mercury, with little or nothing else to show for it.

But that's what happens when automotive marketers play around in an arena where the only obvious raison d'etre is their financial solvency. And that's "One Irrefutable Truth" that gets inexorably lost in the shuffle.

Thanks for listening, see you next Wednesday.