Ford Buzz Car

How do you highlight the emotional feeling experienced when driving? We used advanced bio-emotional research to verify ‘Buzz’ moments from driving and created a unique performance car to bring the ‘Buzz’ to life and create extraordinary media noise!

Working alongside WPP Team Ford, we were briefed to drive awareness and excitement around Ford of Europe’s range of ‘performance vehicles’.

Challenge

Ford, even with its performance range, can be seen as a rational, safe brand. Our challenge was to create an emotional connection and excitement to appeal to the key target audience across the UK, German, French, Italian and Spanish markets.

Strategy

Insight from our focus groups told us that driving a performance car can stimulate ‘buzz moments’. We set about proving these by bringing the buzz to life in a media worthy way to encourage consumers to try a Ford performance car for themselves.

Activity

Working with experts in neuroscience and bio-emotional research we undertook an in-depth experiment to firstly, measure the emotional responses from driving a Ford Performance car and secondly, to analyse the responses from everyday activities such as shopping, riding a roller coaster and passionate kissing. The research PROVED that daily driving of a performance car is among the best ways to boost a sense of wellbeing and emotional fulfilment.

Result

To create media excitement we customised a Ford Focus RS to create The Ford Buzz car. Incorporating wearable and AI tech to animate the driver’s emotions in real time across the car’s exterior, the car actually showed how the driver was feeling!

The Ford Buzz car visited each country with media & influencers invited to try it for themselves, generating extensive coverage across all markets.