The calendar, as always, presented marketers with a familiar challenge: how to say something about motherhood that has not already been said approximately four billion times, preferably while also selling something.
Ford Motor Company, which has been building ambulances for decades and claims leadership in the first-responder vehicle category, arrived at a solution that required looking at what it already had. "Born in a Ford," which appeared on Mother's Day, tells the story of Christie Edwards, a Chicago mother, and Rich Fink, an emergency medical technician, discussing the day Ms. Edwards's daughter arrived in the back of an ambulance. There are no horsepower figures. There is no towing capacity. There is, for that matter, very little Ford.
"It's about the trust and reliability Ford represents in life's most pivotal moments," said Michael Cope, senior director of consumer marketing at Ford. "Telling real stories connects on a deeply human level."
The campaign, created by WPP, represents what Mr. Cope described as a creative direction Ford has been developing this year, alongside work like "Bronco Search & Rescue" and "American Value for American Values." The common element, he said, is a focus on authentic narratives of how Ford vehicles enable human capability — which is to say, showing the trucks and vans doing things rather than merely existing photogenically on mountain roads.
Jason Xenopoulos, global chief creative officer at WPP for Ford, called it "a truly human story that no other brand can tell." (Whether Chevrolet, which also builds ambulances, might dispute this exclusivity remains to be seen.)
There is, of course, a commercial dimension. Ford's First Responder Recognition Program offers rebates on eligible new vehicles. The campaign does not mention this, which suggests someone in Dearborn understood that a birth story probably should not end with a discount code.
Mother's Day advertising tends toward the greeting-card version of motherhood. Ford went looking for the version that involves sirens.
Original story published in The Drum: "Ford’s most human campaign began in the back of an ambulance | The Drum"