New Frontiers - Ford ft. Himani Shivpuri

What image comes to mind when you think of a family car? Husband, wife, and two kids going on a trip? Whom do you picture driving a 5 seater compact SUV? A middle-aged, successful family man, maybe a younger professional, but probably not a 60-year-old mother, right? If you don’t relate to these visuals, that’s fine; but if you do, be prepared for a new definition of what ‘family wali feeling’ is when it comes to cars.

In this piece, we look at one of the ads of Ford’s Open Doors campaign and analyze it from a marketing and consumer behavior lens. If you haven’t seen the ad yet, quickly watch it here before reading the blog further.

Breaking stereotypes

If you also found the ad surprising, you are not alone. When we asked ‘Who do you picture driving Ecosport?’ in a survey, merely 3% of respondents clearly said a woman; moreover, only 18% said old-aged people. Most people pictured a middle-aged, established, family man driving the car because that’s what has been portrayed in a majority of the ads — a man leading the family. But owning to their “Go Further” tagline, Ford has beautifully showcased how an old mother visiting her daughter is equally fitting in the driver’s seat.

And this is in tandem with the fact that women are driving (pun intended) SUV demand in the market. Hyundai Creta and Kia Seltos both feature in the top cars for women by CarDekho and Cars24 as well.

“We have also seen many women buyers opting for SUVs, like Creta, because of its functionality and safety features…” - Tarun Garg, director (sales and marketing) at Hyundai Motor India.

Not Made in India

Ford has traditionally struggled, for more than two decades, in making meaningful inroads in India. In 2019, it had to enter into a joint venture with Mahindra, transferring most of its assets in India, with Mahindra owing the larger stake (51%)

One of the reasons for Ford’s dismal performance could be its roots. In our survey, we found that along with Quality and history, Ford is most associated with the word ‘American.’ Given that buying a car is an emotion in India, one can see how a legacy American brand might struggle to connect with Indians. This is also amplified by the success of Maruti Suzuki, which is considered to be a part of Indian heritage. And given the increased focus on Indian goods and products with sentiments like ‘Make in India’ and ‘Vocal for Local’, Ford needs to find a way to be more Indian — maybe one of the reasons to enter into a JV with an Indian giant.

Thus it makes sense to build the campaign around Diwali, with a mother making laddoos for her daughter whom she expects home for the festival — something that every Indian can relate to.

Making it believable

Now the tricky thing is that it’s usually not that easy to counter customer’s predisposition directly — you have to make it believable that the motherly actress they saw in movies 20 years ago can drive an SUV. And Ford does it with a mix of emotions and logic. The mother is portrayed as relatively modern and comfortable with technology — learning new recipes online, video calling her daughter — and emotional, driving all night long to visit her injured daughter. The story seems plausible. But the icing on the cake is the confidence in her answer when her daughter asks her if she drove so far alone. The sheer pride and conviction with which she says ‘haan toh’ just drives home (pun intended again, sorry) the point that her driving the car is so normal that it shouldn’t even be surprising. And that’s where the idea of an older woman driving an SUV gets accepted by the audience.

I can do it too

The success of any campaign can be measured by the percentage of potential customers it can help in converting to actual customers. And that’s where this campaign scores high marks. When we showed the ad to some women who earlier imagined men driving SUVs, almost all of them responded positively, saying that they now believed that they, or an older woman, can drive EcoSport too.

The Open Doors campaign was very cleverly designed to connect the product with the rising target segment and will surely help the company capture this new market.

Let us know your thoughts in the responses. For more interesting campaigns and analysis, follow Nacho Marketing!