April 20, 2009

Ford Choosing to BE DiFFERENT

I liked Ford’s advertisement in the National Post April 20, 2009. What a breath of fresh air considering the gloom and doom material one reads (and I blogged about in earlier posts) about the other North American Auto Companies.

The Ford ad is rather unique in that it openly declares that they have ‘Quality Equal to Honda and Toyota’. You don’t see that too often, but If the world class benchmark for automobile quality rests with these cars then I suppose Ford has reasoned that they need to at least claim they are at the same level. The truth is, however, they need to vault beyond ‘best in class’ to BE DiFFERENT, but at least they have taken a good first step.

I liked the value statements they used to try and position themselves as DiFFERENT. They talk about fuel efficient vehicles and hybrid capability and the application of digital technology to provide unique ‘smart’ features. But the piece that I particularly liked was what I would call an indirect use of the only statement claiming something that no other competitor could claim (the ultimate manifestation of uniqueness by the way is the ability to craft an only statement - see the BE DiFFERENT Strategic Imperative of my book).

Under the heading ‘The Safety Leader’ Ford states that they have:
- ‘More top safety ratings than any other automaker’
- ‘The most 5-star safety ratings from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration’
- ‘The most top safety picks from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’

Not bad! A decent attempt by Ford to position themselves as truly unique along a value dimension that everyone can relate to.

Keep up the good work Ford; I wish you good luck.

Cheers, Roy Osing
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See my earlier blogs on General Motors

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Posted 4.20.09 at 05:56 am by Roy Osing | Read Comments (0) | Leave a Comment