Divorce is a topic that is almost never explored in advertising. It's simply too thorny and depressing. Yet, with a unique 16-minute short-film Ford Denmark proved that it is a topic that gets people talking. The car industry has a long tradition of focusing on the functional benefits when it comes to marketing car brands. But Ford wanted to shift this focus. The brief was hence to create a piece of content that was able to spark more meaningful conversations than your average car advert. We therefore decided to embrace the fact that the role of a car in our daily life isn’t necessarily about horsepower and beautiful turning curves – it’s just as much a means that connect us. It connects us with work, with experiences, and with family. Even in times of hardship. This created the foundation of the story we wanted to tell.

As the story opens we see a father and his daughter playing around in front of the family home. As the mother arrives we sense an undercurrent of something wrong.

We soon learn that the parents are going through a divorce, and as the film progresses we get an up-close view of how the situation affects each family-member. We see the younger brother taking a stand with the limited means he has, by refusing to get out of the car unless his parents get back together. In the next part, we see the father struggling to have a heart-to-heart conversation with his kids, while picking them up from school. Asserting that the divorce has changed their usual dynamics. Due to a separate crisis towards the end of the film we see all family-members reuniting and leaving us with a sense of ambiguous hope for the future of this family.

We didn’t want to underestimate the importance of getting global attention, in order to make a greater local impact. The 16 minute short film was a PR spearhead designed to create attention in Denmark and beyond. There is a close connection between global reach and local Danish impact. We therefore planned for more than just viral spread. We wanted to harvest global attention giving the campaign validation and extra news value for the local Danish press. We launched the campaign in week 17, both locally and globally and reached out to more than 500 editors, primarily in the US and Denmark.