Ford's Underwater Dance Is a Surprisingly Elegant Ad for a Pickup Truck

European campaign for the Ford Ranger ditches the rugged terrains typical of the category

This is not your typical pickup truck commercial, with its clichéd shots of outdoorsy male drivers manoeuvring their vehicles through rugged deserts and mountain vistas. Instead, Ford’s European campaign for its Ranger pickup truck features breathtaking scenes of people swimming underwater at night. They at first appear to be in a pool, but as they swim to the surface it becomes apparent that they are in a lake lit by the headlights of a series of Ranger pickups, which slowly emerge from the water onto dry land. The swimmers’ adventures deep underwater demonstrate the truck’s wading depth of 31.5 inches (800mm).

London agency Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO created the ad and Adam Berg directed it through production company Smuggler. The crew shot it in a film studio and on location in Romania during summer 2021. The film will be accompanied by print and digital out-of-home ads that feature aquatic images shot by photographer Benedict Redgrove. 

Bucking convention

“The convention for pickups is to show rough terrain and tough loads, but Ranger has the best wading depth in the category. Showing it driving through deep water felt right creatively but also makes it stand apart from other pickups,” Martin Loraine, writer and deputy executive creative director at AMV BBDO, said in a statement.

The campaign promotes the Ford Ranger’s awards of International Pick-up 2020 and What Car? Pick-up of the Year 2021. “Our strategy was to create a campaign that would outperform typical pickup truck advertising. The outcome is a stunning demonstration of the Ranger’s class-leading wading depth, just one of the capabilities that make it THE pickup,” Peter Zillig, director of marketing at Ford of Europe, added.

At the beginning of this year Suzy Deering joined Ford as its new global chief marketing officer. Deering previously spent more than five years at eBay, where she was the worldwide and North American CMO.