An old acquaintance of mine, Cary DiCristina,  is a screen writer and he recently let me know about a project that he has been involved with for the launch of the next Mustang in 2010. It is a short film competition where the main theme is ‘I love(d) that Mustang so much……’

The basic premise is that a Mustang can spark up such strong emotions, wouldn’t you want to be a part of that? On a similar note to the Nike Debacle post the other day – this is a large advertiser looking to use online video in an engaging way, encouraging the user to seek it out voluntarily. Sure there will probably be a TV/Radio/Newspaper/Magazine spot to accompany the campaign but since the majority of the action is through the website it makes sense that this is where the campaign lives.

The fact is that this is a campaign about emotion, everybody’s emotions about a Mustang are different so rather than try and force a one size fits all ad campaign through everybody’s eyeballs, it works better to invite them in to get content that they can control (hopefully enjoy) and feel good about. I don’t know what metrics Ford are hoping to get out of the campaign but if the quality of the submissions for their short film collection are anything to go by then it must have been a success. If you would like to see Cary’s then please watch The New Girl.