Ford polishes F-150's marketing

When it comes to launching the new F-150, Ford Motor Co. knows it has its work cut out for it.

Over the past year, truck sales have tanked in the face of high fuel prices, tight credit, a collapsing housing market and a weak broader economy. Ford is launching its new pickup into one of the most difficult pickup markets ever.

But it is a market Ford has owned for more than 30 years and the Dearborn automaker is hoping to leverage that to make this critical launch a success.

Ford's marketing will be targeted at its 9 million existing truck customers. Advertising will tout improvements to the new F-150 over previous models for things such as towing capabilities and better fuel economy.

"We're really emphasizing those compelling improvements, the capability enhancements, the new technology, the safety enhancements," Doug Scott, Ford's truck marketing manager, told The Detroit News. "All of those things are, we believe, reasons why people who are driving our products will say, 'Hey. I've got to have that.' "

Ford delayed the launch of the F-150 by two months -- it will now begin shipping in October -- to give it more time to conduct consumer research and find the right marketing messages.

It also used the delay to give workers at its Dearborn Truck Plant more time for quality training and dealers more time to sell down existing stocks of the current model.

Dealer inventories have dropped from 130,000 units at the end of May to 90,000 at the end of August, and Ford hopes to get rid of another 40,000 F-150s by the end of November.

"Now, when we launch the new product, we can concentrate and we can focus our communications not on discounting the old models, but on the product capabilities and features of the new F-150," said Ford sales analyst George Pipas.

While Ford is not ruling out the use of incentives to help sell the new truck, it says it is pricing the F-150 to obviate the need for them. For example, the F-150 Lariat SuperCrew, will start at $35,820 -- more than $5,000 less than a comparably equipped 2009 Dodge Ram, another all-new pickup that is just hitting dealerships.

Analysts said Ford's strategy makes sense, adding that it had to refresh its existing model even with pickup sales declining.

"What Ford has on their side is that they're the No.1 player in this market," said Joe Langley of CSM Worldwide.

"It looks like they're taking a pretty cautious approach on the launch, so I don't think we're going to see this massive flood of them where they'd have to throw a lot of money at them."