Changing Environments: 2010 Ford Taurus Outdoor

Digital billboards are hardly new, but there seems to be some potential in the way Western New York Ford dealers will use them. When it starts to rain, the message changes. When there is a full moon, the message changes. When any number of 50 situations occur, the message changes to pinpoint the situation and deliver a situational message.

"The boards allow us to talk to people about relevant local events, news and weather, while having some fun introducing the vehicle's features," said Chuck Basil, representative of the Ford Dealers of Western New York. "The new Ford Taurus is a very unexpected vehicle so we wanted our advertising to follow suit."

That is what the campaign is about: It will introduce people to the new 2010 Ford Taurus, with western New York Ford dealers hoping to drive home the message that the car, along with the billboard messages, are "unexpected." While the creative thread is thin, the application has potential for both Ford and the future of advertising.

"Advertisers are now able to change their messages as often as they want, set up their ads to run up-to-the-minute weather forecasts or even link to a Twitter or Facebook account updating the board's message almost instantly," says Todd Schaefer of Lamar Advertising. "The creative options are endless."

Why Situational Communication Will Work In The Future

While marketers are borrowing from their public relations, advertising, and corporate communication budgets to cobble together social media funding, social media is not replacing them. Situational communication is replacing it.

We already know that the course of most communication is to steadily increase the impact of proximity (location) and demographics (population characteristics) thereby increasing the connection with the consumer. But what hasn't been fully explored, since the individual targeting featured in the film Minority Report changed too frequently to be scalable, is how technology could put us on the right path.

Could you, perhaps, read this post on the bus stop shelter poster or duratran signage at the airport? And if not this post, then why not The New York Times, with a certain percentage of space saved for the content sponsor? And while e-reader technology is still not cheap enough to mass distribute devices today, we might ask why print publications haven't been exploring such options to deliver the distribution devices for pennies on the dollar and thereby eliminate distribution and printing costs.

Right. For all the buzz from some publishers about consumers paying for subscriptions, most of them have forgotten that consumers never really paid for the paper. Advertisers did. Subscription prices barely covered the price for home delivery.

So how does the 2010 Ford Taurus campaign fit into the picture? Digital publications could deliver digital advertising as situational as Lamar Advertising's outdoor concept, e.g., allowing an investment firm to deliver messages based upon the fluctuations of the stock market but only for those readers that meet a certain demographic profile.

All it requires is for modern advertising creatives to stop writing for each other and return to their golden era roots, where copywriters once wrote as if they were writing to a single consumer (much like some social media pros do today). In fact, in our playbook, digital distribution would not only make this possible, but it would also make it a necessity. Leap forward already.

Starting Over: Chrysler, Not Campaigning

"When we asked consumers what they wanted to know about Chrysler, they told us to tell them about our products, tell them why they should buy our vehicles and give them a reason why they should be confident in the future of this company," — Steven Landry, executive vice president - North American Sales for Chrysler, told Adweek.

According to the article, that is why the first 30-second ad is a corporate anthem spot called "Bright Future" despite the company's filing for protection under Chapter 11. While the new commercial will air on prime time, it's anybody guess whether consumers will embrace the campaign from Omnicom Group's BBDO in Detroit.

Some of it follows the tone set by its ENVI oriented site. The main site, on the other hand, still leads with a contradictory message that says "Celebrating 25 years of innovation." Whatever happens, we're pretty sure it will be very different than when Chrysler really was a new car company.

Chrysler has plenty of ground to make up. Ford clearly has an advantage, being ranked first in the ability to connect with consumers via social media. One wonders whether the new campaign, apparently grounded in traditional media, can shift sales despite the strong online presence Ford has built.

After all, what Landry says consumers want to know is what they've always wanted to know: what do you sell, why would I buy it, and will you be around if I do? In some circles, that's called a value proposition. But according to the Adweek article, Chysler says it is "part of our continuing mission to build cars and trucks you want to drive."

That would be as opposed to those other car companies. You know, the ones who build cars and trucks we don't want to drive.

Regardless, it will be interesting to watch whether the new partnership with Fiat and a traditional campaign from BBDO will be enough. Based on the partial sneak peek of the television commercial Under The Pentastar and the smart comments made by a handful of consumers on their blog, we're not so sure.