To launch Ford’s darkest and toughest car, we took it to the darkest and toughest place on Earth: Longyearbyen. The world’s northernmost town, where the sun is gone for 100 days and darkness takes over, bringing temperatures down to -40ºC.

At the centre of the 4-minute documentary are the daily journey of three residents – and Ranger Black Edition drivers: a carpenter, an airport ground controller and an arctic farmer. As we see our heroes at work and hear their individual stories, we realise how they can build their lives and find happiness despite all the dangers brought by the dark and cold winter season.

In the end, one thing is clear: not everyone can handle darkness and toughness like the people of Longyearbyen. Not every car can handle darkness and toughness like the Ranger Black Edition.

The campaign launched in the depths of the continental European winter with a teasing 30 second trailer on owned social channels, to reward fans and followers. Once anticipation was built, the full documentary was published with paid support to encourage engagement.

The Pan-European campaign, published across 14 markets, had a high social- & digital-focus. Partnering with Unruly distribution to help deliver the film allowed us to achieve cost-effective views from new audiences through a network of high-quality online lifestyle publications.

Throughout the duration of the 6-week campaign, markets also made use of the impactful content in more traditional channels. Print ads captured audience attention with full page magazine placements showing off the Shadow Black paint job in the Polar nightscape.

The market reception for the hero content was so encouraging that the documentary was re-rendered & mixed for cinema advertising for tactically geo-located screenings.

Across Facebook, YouTube and Unruly distribution, the celebration of darkness reached over 8m people. YouTube and Facebook recorded 3.5 million video views and a further 491k views were garnered through the Unruly distribution network.

With all 3,000 purchasable vehicles sold, the ‘100 Days of Dark’ campaign reached 2,669% more consumers than Ranger Black editions in existence, achieving the objective to build wider nameplate and primary brand awareness.

In addition to reach, these social channels registered an engagement rate of 46%, surpassing 2017 campaign benchmarking by 10%. This demonstrates that social content doesn’t necessarily need all the action to happen in the first three seconds to be engaging.

Or just maybe a dark car, in a dark environment is more engaging than you might think?

Building upon the current zenith of short docs, ‘100 Days of Dark’ exposes the audience to parts of humanity to which they are not normally privy.

Where most commercial vehicle adverts focus on the functional fortitude of the mechanics, this documentary delves into the darkness with the Ford Ranger Black reflecting the emotional resilience of those driving it.

Striving to produce communications that resonated with a wider aspirational audience in addition to the more nuanced consumption target audience led us to nurture the idea of a premium filmic asset.

This content needed to elevate brand awareness through visually-arresting cinematography and an engaging narrative whilst also seizing the opportunity to display the Ranger Black’s industrious functionality through the ultimate product demonstration.

Competing for media commitment with the pan-European launch of Ford’s small SUV passenger vehicle, which had thirty-seven times the sales volume targets as Ranger Black, meant local market support was going to be hard pushed.

Understanding social media to be a space of high affinity amongst the aspirational target audience meant the output could reach a large user base for relatively little media contribution. It was therefore vital that the film would capture and retain attention in this channel to reach the awareness objective.

In an increasingly competitive segment for both commercial and passenger use, we found ourselves trying to defend the Ford Ranger’s position within the segment.

With the product update not arriving in market until 2019, to maintain product awareness Ford released a limited edition, high profile & exclusive Special Interest Product, the Ford Ranger Black Edition.

The original brief was to create tactical press and online advertising to target the consumption audience to sell the metal.

However, despite the limited-edition updates affecting only the vehicle aesthetics, we felt there was still an opportunity to prove that the Ranger Black was as tough, practical and capable as they come.

Given the relatively low sales targets of the limited-edition, the socially-led campaign didn’t aim to leverage sales-driving formats. Instead, the objective was to leverage Ranger Black content to raise nameplate awareness, increase brand favourability and position Ford as a tough and adventurous brand.