MEDIA SPOTLIGHT: Ford Features Fasteners in F-150 National Advertising Campaign

John Wolz

Editor”s Note: Articles in Media Spotlight are excerpts from publications or broadcasts that show the industry what the public is reading or hearing about fasteners and fastener companies.
Six steel bolts are the stars of Ford Motor Company”s year-long integrated television, print and outdoor advertising campaign promoting the redesigned F-150 pickup. The sustained advertising and marketing program will register more than 16 billion impressions during its run.\
Both Textron Fastening Systems and Alcoa Fastening Systems are touting their fasteners in Ford trucks.
In the TV ad, an announcer strolls confidently below the truck and speaks glowingly of the payload capacity of the F-150. These ads will continue through the end of the year and show up in NFL football games, NASCAR races, rodeo competitions, and such top-rated television shows as “CSI,” “Law and Order,” “The Simpsons,” and “Extreme Makeover.”
The bolts have the strength to hold a 5,000-pound F-150 suspended in mid air. These box bolts or cargo and carriage bolts as the ads call them join the truck frame to ensure that the box and cargo area are firmly secured to the truck. The bolts are produced by Textron Fastening Systems.
The target market for the ads is men in the 25 to 55 age demographic. The message in the carriage bolt ad is quite clear: If Ford uses bolts this strong, then the entire truck must be strong in all respects, including carrying capacity, payload, and frame strength.
J. Walter Thompson, Ford Division ad agency, produced the ads last March in a studio in downtown Los Angeles, using the same facility where Terminator III, the Arnold Schwarzenegger action adventure, was filmed.
Print ads, which included three-page inserts featuring the box bolts, run in such publications as Field & Stream, American Quarter Horse, Boating, Country Weekly, Farm Journal, and Car & Driver. The headline asks: What Does It Take To Build A Truck Like This? The copy answers: Think of them as six chrome-plated reasons why the new Ford F-150 has more payload capacity in its class. When it comes to attaching a pickup truck box to a chassis, our bolts have a big job to do.
The carriage bolt print ads were part of the F-150 launch campaign and they proved so popular that Ford decided to produce a TV commercial featuring them. In fact, one study concluded that the carriage bolt print ad was tied with a quietness ad as the most popular among readers of publications on the magazine schedule.
Merchandising packages, which were placed with 5,000 Ford dealers throughout North America, included a sample TFS box bolt as its centerpiece. A cover letter noted that competitor trucks use hangers that can rust and loosen over time, but F-150″s six cargo bolts attach directly to the frame to ensure that the F-150 box and cargo are safely secured to the truck. “Box bolts were designed
specifically for the F-150 in 1982 to solve an assembly problem, and it”s the only application for this fastener,” said Tim McGuire, TFS director of applications engineering. “The F-150 could reach 900,000 sales this year and there are six bolts per vehicle, so it has become an important relationship for us over the years.”
Alcoa is touting its Huckbolt fastener, designed as a permanent clamp, as the “ideal solution for fusing the crossmember to the truck”s frame.”
The Ford ad says, “Huckbolts stay tight ten times longer than ordinary nuts and bolts. That way, there is no alignment shifts or squeaks and rattles.”
“Huck fasteners are used whenever failure is not an option. We are pleased that Ford is taking full advantage of the brand recognition and performance reputation of Huck brand fasteners in this ad campaign,” Alcoa global marketing manager Jim Hutchison declared.
The Ford ad will appear in several upcoming issues of construction and contractor trade publications.
Alcoa Huck fasteners are featured on other Ford vehicles, including Taurus/Sable, Crown Victoria/Grand Marquis, Lincoln Town Car and Explorer.�2004 FastenerNews.com