Alesha car keys

An orchestra pit stop for Ford

What?: Ford is shelling out £45M on a new ad campaign that shows a 15-piece orchestra playing 21 instruments customised from parts of a Ford Focus, including a “clutch guitar” and “window harp”. The ad is a bid by Ford to highlight its kinetic design stance. “The campaign is linked to the idea of feel the difference,” stated Mark Ovenden, Marketing Director at Ford UK. “We want to portray a message beyond showing a car driving along a piece of road. Like a great piece of music, the Ford Focus is more than the sum of its parts.”

A separate advert shows Alesha Dixon – she of Strictly Come Dancing (and, to a lesser extent, Mis-Teeq) fame – in a music video featuring the car part orchestra. An accompanying website provides behind- the-scenes footage of how the instruments were constructed as well as interviews with the musicians.

So What?: These instruments are beautifully designed in true sci-fi Heath Robinson-style, placing the internal workings of the car centre stage. Alesha Dixon seems a bizarre fit, but that aside, this is a clever meld of engineering and music, and we applaud Ford for attempting something more tangible than the current crop of transformer-styled ads. I also hope it mangled the annoying Dog-Bot from its Ford Fiesta ads to make a kick drum.

“The TV campaign will face obvious comparisons with Honda’s excellent ‘choir’ ad, but that’s as much a reflection of how few brands have yet to acknowledge a world in which signifiers extend beyond the road.”
James Poletti, Content Manager, FRUKT

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