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Autos July 31, 2008, 5:00PM EST

Ford: A Toyota Vet to the Rescue

(page 2 of 3)

Creative chief Barlow helped assemble Ford's marketing dream team Bill Cramer/Wonderful Machine

Flex product manager Raghavachari exercises strict brand discipline Bill Cramer/Wonderful Machine

He went to Ford with at least five years' worth of Toyota's plans in his head (though he insists they will stay there).

Despite his reputation, Farley was received warily. On one hand, say current and former staffers, people were heartened that a Toyota big wheel living in California thought enough of Ford's chances to move to Dearborn, Mich., Ford's headquarters. On Dec. 3, Farley introduced himself to several hundred staffers. He repeated Mulally's mantra of creating one global brand and breaking down silos. To show that he felt people's pain, he talked about the deaths of his premature twins and the loss of his cousin, former Saturday Night Live star Chris Farley. James Farley's candor seemed alien at buttoned-up Ford. "He was talking to people losing a lot of hope," says a Ford manager who attended the meeting. "While it played well with some, it put a lot of others off." But even Ford diehards understood something had to give. "There was one slogan we all knew that wasn't in the room," says Ford Div. General Marketing Manager John Felice. "Save the Company."

In early December, Farley sat down with Toby Barlow and George Rogers, respectively executive creative director and CEO of Team Detroit, the WPP agency that handles Ford's ad business. Farley got right to the point. "Do you guys play Fantasy Baseball?" he asked. Both men had heard of the virtual leagues put together by baseball fanatics, but neither belonged to one. Farley said he wanted Team Detroit to put together a kind of fantasy league, scouring the planet for the most forward-thinking and creative talent. Farley didn't care where the people came from. They could come from WPP, PR firms, universities, or digital agencies. They could be freelancers. They could be from Detroit or Dubai. "Team Detroit should be like a general manager of a baseball team," he says. "I'm looking to them to find me the best players for every game."

Farley was lobbing a bomb at the cozy relationship that had evolved between Ford and WPP, which tended not to look outside for fresh ideas. Barlow, a relative newcomer who lives not in Detroit's suburbs but in the city's beleaguered downtown, welcomed the Farley plan. "We have talented people here for sure," he says. "But we'd have to be nuts to think the smartest people in the world are all parking their cars in Dearborn."

Barlow had less than four months to create a new strategy and ads in time for an April dealer meeting. He mined his Rolodex and put together a "league" comprising 20 handpicked copywriters, art directors, and Web-focused creative talent. They represent a cross-section of disciplines and backgrounds; among them are freelancers and staffers from inside and outside WPP's roster of agencies. Several had worked for Nissan (NSANY), BMW, and Apple (AAPL)—whose brand campaigns had impressed Farley and Barlow.

In early January, the creative team convened at the Detroit Doubletree Hotel for a 72-hour workathon to develop some 70 ideas that would be whittled down to three. They each received a six-inch-thick binder of market research and product plans for three years, complete with photos of future models much of the world hadn't yet seen. And they got unprecedented face time with senior executives.

Farley knew early on that if he were to succeed, he needed to involve dealers in a big way. Arguably, no relationship is more important in the auto industry than the one between the company making the cars and the people selling them. Yet Ford has traditionally balked at bringing dealers into the creative process. That's astounding when you consider that of the $1.5 billion the company spends each year on advertising in the U.S., dealers control 75% of the budget. It's telling that only about two-thirds of Ford's dealers participated in "Bold Moves," a short-lived campaign launched in 2006. That means $400 million of Ford's ad budget wasn't even connected to the central marketing strategy.

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