Iron Lung – out of the way… Jessica Yu’s new Ford is taking your place.
A few weeks ago while documentary filmmaker Jessica Yu was in Toronto premiering her debut feature narrative film PING PONG PLAYA, the massive “Swap Your Ride” ad campaign she directed for Ford started sweeping across the country. If you’ve had your TV turned on one of the major networks the past week or so, chances are you’ve seen some of these “Swap Your Ride” Ford spots — real people, swapping their rides for a week and they have no idea they were getting a Ford — sound familiar? That guy, with the glasses on his head? Blue shirt? The other “Can I keep this?” Guy at the end?
Yeah, they’re everywhere. And even though these little spots won’t be hailed as the next “Happiness Factory” of car advertising and honored with dozens of creative filmmaking awards, the entire “Swap Your Ride” campaign was so massive and executed so well… it’s pretty amazing. The whole slight-of-hand Jessica Yu and the production team pulled on all the participants (over 80 people in 4 cities) by withholding the fact they were actually filming a Ford campaign, that they didn’t know they’d be driving a Ford and as far as getting a true “consumer message” across — it seems Ford couldn’t be more happy with quips like “I got bad news for the Suburban”.
On directing the spots, Jessica Yu says:
“The challenge of the project was in orchestrating a situation that would elicit honest reactions from our participants,” Yu said of directing the spots. “Over the course of the shoot you could see how the participants embraced the role of being ‘consumer experts’. Unlike a conventional campaign, we were able to document the way people use their cars in real life and that discovery process made it fun.”
Press release here.
Want to Swap Your Ride? Visit here.
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