The NFL’s opening weekend saw a heavyweight new entry into the league’s roster of partners, as Ford kicked off its new three-year deal with the organization that makes Ford trucks the Official Truck of the NFL for its F-Series lineup. Activation includes the first-ever Built Ford Tough Offensive Line of the Week award, Built Ford Tough Tailgate Trucks On Demand delivering a game day tailgate experience throughout the season, as well as a Toughest Ticket sweepstakes dangling a chance to win a pair of tickets to Super Bowl LI, plus an all-new 2017 Ford F-Series Super Duty customized to showcase their favorite NFL team.
Cynopsis Sports spoke with Chantel Lenard – Executive Director of USMarketing for Ford – about the new partnership, how the company’s approach to sports marketing is changing and how Uber came into the equation.
Lenard on targeting the NFL: Obviously we are an advertiser of a number of live sports and the NFL, in particular over the years. But this is the first time that we are combining into a deeper relationship and we saw this as an opportunity to bring two great American brands closer together. Linking America’s most popular sport with America’s most popular trucks, we think is a natural tie. It also allows us to reach our F-Series customers. Truck buyers are huge NFL fans.
On the evolution of sports partnerships: Our recent partnerships do allow us that opportunity to go deeper. It is now less that putting your shield or stamp on your brand. It’s really how you do with integrated marketing. For example, the Built Ford Tough Offensive Line of the Week Award will see content on NFL.com every week that included NFL-created content that highlights the performance of the selected line for that week and talking about the unsung heroes in the trenches, which is what an offensive line does and what our customers do every day. We will be integrating some of our content into that so it will be a seemless fit.
On experiential marketing: One of the things that we know about football is that it is about the experience – going to the game, being with friends, etc. So as this idea of the “toughest tailgate” came up, we started thinking about partners and Uber was a natural fit because when you are looking for a ride to go to these parties, you turn to Uber. Having an opportunity to expose customers to these trucks, on which they will get a ride, and receive tickets and a tailgate experience when they get there was a huge opportunity for us to have people see our trucks in action.