Ford has hired Jimmy Fallon to create a 60-second Super Bowl ad for its Lincoln brand based on script suggestions it is soliciting on Twitter.
The attempt to reach out to a younger consumer comes as Lincoln has lost 63% of its sales since its 1990 peak. The effort to re-establish the brand began on Monday with a new ad that shows an actor playing Abraham Lincoln emerging from a fog. The ad then shows vintage Lincoln models along with images of Clark Gable and Dean Martin. The tie-in with the president comes as Stephen Spielberg's well-received Lincoln is playing in theaters.
For the Super Bowl, the brand has launched SteertheScript, a crowdsourcing effort that lets fans co-author a spot that Fallon (shown here with actress Zooey Deschanel) will create. Fallon has more than 7 million followers on Twitter vs. a little more than 170,000 for Lincoln.
“We’re going to put a different twist on it and approach it in a very social way and try to do something that hasn’t been done before,” Matt VanDyke, Lincoln’s director of marketing, sales and service, told Bloomberg. Hitching its wagon to a young social media-friendly star might be a good move for Lincoln. Chevrolet, for instance, managed to get one of the 20 most-shared ads of the year by partnering with OK Go for its Super Bowl ad earlier this year.