The problems that advertisers face when they are making an advert for TV are that viewers can easily switch it off. Therefore, they have to make it much more interesting by trying to fit a very appealing story line into a thirty second advert. The Ford-Mondeo campaign has skilfully done this by advertising ‘SAFETY’, but in the format of a horror film. The people who make the advert know that when you are watching a film, you have to focus your full attention on to understand it, so they made the advert in this layout in the aim of making it short and arresting so that people watching it will pay attention in order to understand it.
The Ford-Motor company had to develop an excellent advert for this particular car because the Mondeo model is aimed at families. The objective was to launch a new version of an old car. The purpose was to boast one of their new and improved features, which is mainly safety. The Ford company is also striving to focus on ‘ambitious’ customers So as to attract a well off group and convince them to own the Mondeo range. In other words they are trying to say, if you buy a Mondeo car you belong to the ‘ambitious’ class.
Perhaps, it is also an attempt to prove that the car is ‘unique’, as there are about ten other similar cars currently on the market. The Ford-Mondeo advertisers tend to focus more on safety knowing pretty well that it is the key selling point as Mondeo is aimed at families. People would also be attracted to buy it as it offers extra protection seeing that they are mainly buying it for those reasons, so the ‘SAFETY’ features should be slightly exaggerated. Also, they have to be convinced that it is ‘unique’ or unusual because they are selling in a competitive market. So they made sure in their advert that they brought out how dissimilar from others it was.
This is why they designed a storyboard from an unusual angle, which is why the storyline is told in a horror film genre. The advert tries to capture a connection between a little girl looking for a safe place to hide and a Mondeo. At the beginning, there is a little girl in a bed opening up her eyes a little bit and looking outside her window. On hearing a storm, she then appears to be worried so the camera angle is under her bed to show her legs which demonstrate how young she is and how scared children could be at that age. The camera crew also shot it at that angle to show the toys underneath with the intention that the girl thinks they are going to come alive.
So she quickly runs elsewhere for cover, next we see her passing through her mother and father’s bedroom. At this point, she has her night light on and her father is disturbed; then begins to wake up. We assume she will go to them for safety but she decides to walk down the stairs. She lives in a very minimalist house and it looks unfriendly, which is why she cannot seek to find refuge in her house. So we see her still walking towards somewhere that we don’t really know. When surprisingly we see her peeping through a door, she then looks closer then turns on a fluorescent light. Then we start to understand what is going on, of course she was directed to walk across the back of the car to show the mark: ‘MONDEO’, which is the make of the car, she now shuts the door forgetting her comfort blanket behind which demonstrates that she is in a place where a comfort blanket is meaningless because the Ford-Mondeo is far safer than the blanket.
‘Daddy’ now comes to the garage to see what is going on and finds his daughter in the car sleeping. Then the screen goes black for about two seconds followed by the ford telephone number and website being advertised. All of a sudden you hear a whispering female probably European voice over the advert saying:
…”THE FORD-MONDEO BUILT TO LEAD”…
which demonstrates the whole point of the advert, exercising safety and in their slogan it shows that the intention of their message was that the Mondeo’s best feature is safety. All things considered, for thirty seconds, I think the Ford-Mondeo advert got its message across quite well, but they still have yet to convince people such as me (if I was a parent) to buy the car, despite the fact that they used the girl quite well in the car knowing well that she is small in relation to the Mondeo. The Mondeo is a reasonable car, except to me it does not seem to be different enough from the rest of the cars in the market.
