Bad Ad Makes Ford Shift Into Reverse

Came across a controversy brewing up in Winnipeg, Manitoba where someone at Ford Canada seems to have approved a print ad campaign built around the theme "Drive It Like You Stole It".

Absolute genius, at least where "absolute" means "relatively" and "genius" is a stand-in for "stupid" (and I'm being nice).

The brouhaha over another less-than-stellar marketing effort from Ford reminds me of a post I read by Jon Warshawsky over at Fight The Bull about Ford's new ad slogan, "The Way Forward":

Compared to "The Ultimate Driving Machine," "The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection" and "There is No Substitute," "The Way Forward" implies a kind of desperate groping through the corridors of modern automaking, hoping for a light switch before we stumble in the dark and run into something.

Ha. Warshawsky continues, quite hilariously:

I think, perhaps, Ford needs to stop making the inspired communicators park miles away in their imports. Clearly they're spending too much time trudging to the office and missing some important meetings.

The bad ad has since been pulled, but obviously that parking situation at Ford HQ hasn't yet been resolved.