Our research gave us this surprising little insight: apparently, most car enthusiasts in America had a pent-up desire to let loose with the legend that is the Mustang. While some had already acted on this desire and had a Mustang story to share, others had only dreamed of doing something amazing with the car.

So to launch the new 2010 Mustang, we created a program to let people unleash their Mustang side. Enter The ’10 Unleashed. Ten incredible opportunities to unleash your Mustang side, any way you want to, no holds barred. In the next year, we made good on our promise and we captured it all on tape. All told, we created ten unscripted, uncensored, original documentaries, fed people’s Mustang fantasy with an online customiser, and launched the Mustang in a way that truly transcended marketing. Along the way, we also inspired an entirely new generation of Mustang enthusiasts.

As a testament to the power of this campaign, we’ve had over 2.4 million views of The ’10 Unleashed documentaries, nearly 3.4 million visits to the2010Mustang.com (surpassing 139% of Ford’s benchmark for launch sites), people have built over 900,000 custom Mustangs with the Mustang Customiser, our social media outreach resulted in 156 placements on 48 blogs, and the campaign has registered 684 million media impressions. Most importantly, The ’10 Unleashed has successfully reignited America’s interest and desire for a 45-year old brand during a period of strong and newfound competitive activity. And it all happened for as few dollars as you can imagine being spent on a major car launch.

It all began by unleashing the Mustang live on national television, a historic first for a car debut. Then, we set about finding the most incredible Mustang dreams. Like the story about the blind man who wanted to drive a Mustang. We turned each and every one of these stories into an original documentary that we promoted with print and online campaigns, and shared in the digital space - at the2010Mustang.com, on social media sites, through email and mobile campaigns, at national auto and racing events, and even at retail outlets. And so that people could continue to unleash their Mustang sides, we developed a groundbreaking interactive tool, the Mustang Community Customiser. It allowed users to customize their own Mustang, in real time, simultaneously with other users or on their own. They could then share their creation with friends on Facebook and Twitter, which in turn helped spread the word.