Range anxiety, patchy charging infrastructure and uncertain consumer demand. Then a novel virus broke people's brains.
To some degree you're always pretending a product is better than it is. But this time the vehicle was genuinely fun with appealing features - not a Tesla, but worth a look. Ford bravely gave its first electric the Mustang nameplate, and predictably, fans booed. We tried not to be corny about it.
(While the country was washing groceries and debating which mask to wear, my son was learning to walk, so working remotely on this launch was well-timed.)
Shopper ads by nature worked harder, and sometimes looked better than the brand spots. The goal wasn't to outshine, but there was freedom in “Aw shucks, we’re just the lower funnel guys.”
Ford has since lost billions on its EVs, but the Mach-E leads them in owner satisfaction. How do you measure success, anyway? I was shown a chart and told our ads performed beautifully, per media mix modeling and multi-touch attribution.
I was also told the future was dynamic programmatic: ads made from templates that populate with assets in real time. I nodded.
The big agency model has been dying for as long as I can remember, since clients realized they were burning money on a factory that spent much of its time idle. AI perfects automation that was already underway, and replaces the replaceable. (I don’t know anyone who disagrees with any of this.)
They say you should never mistake advertising for art, but somehow the highest paying creative profession in history is still out there, leaner than ever. A haunted sort of business, caught between worlds, full of people addicted to either the struggle or the money.