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- Ford Motor Co.’s 2026 marketing message will focus on vehicle features.
- Ford advertises at many large live sporting events, but not the Super Bowl.
- Ford will likely seek more product placement for its cars in TV shows and movies.
Whether you’re planning a race through the desert or just driving to the grocery store, Ford Motor Company wants you to know there’s a vehicle to meet your needs. Because Ford says it represents capability.
That’s the marketing message the Dearborn-based automaker will promote in 2026. It’s the capabilities of each vehicle in the lineup, from the Bronco’s off-road capabilities to the Mustang’s track performance to the F-Series’ best-selling work trucks, Michael Cope, Ford’s senior director of consumer marketing, told the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network.
It’s an ambitious message that counters Ford’s quality problems in recent years. In 2025, the company set a record by ending the year with 152 recalls. Ford has already announced a recall of 119,000 vehicles this year due to fire hazards.
This theme of capability also stands in stark contrast to the message Ford used in 2025 to promote itself as an American automaker during its “From America, For America” campaign, which ran from April 3 to July 7, 2025. In doing so, Ford pushed the message that it builds more cars here, employs more workers and offers workers-price deals to buyers than any other automaker. This campaign significantly boosted Ford’s sales in the first half of the year.
And while Ford knows affordability remains a consumer concern, Cope said the automaker’s message this year focuses on what a vehicle can do rather than its price.
“We address affordability in a few different ways,” Cope said, referring to special incentive offers on vehicles. But he said the capabilities are unique to Ford because of the variety of products in the lineup and the capabilities of those products.
The automaker hasn’t disclosed its marketing budget, but Cope said Ford will spend money on advertising across mainstream media, social media and digital platforms. The company also said it will increase its use of product placement in TV shows and movies this year. Consider an adventure show where characters drive vehicles that can be used for work, off-roading, or racing.
But while Ford is focused on reaching ads during live sporting events, don’t expect Ford to run ads during the biggest event of them all: Super Bowl LX. The last time Ford ran an ad during the Super Bowl was in 2017.
“Linear TV is fully prepared to announce the Bronco production, which will not be aired at this year’s Super Bowl,” Cope said. “There’s nothing about this being a hard and fast rule. The Super Bowl has a very specific audience and it’s very large. It’s just that the Super Bowl wasn’t featured in the media buys this year.”
Ford’s first major promotion of the year
But Cope said consumers will likely see Ford ads at “other major sporting events in the coming months.”
Ford’s first major promotion of the year is called “Answer the Call.” Ford began “Answer the Call” during the NFC Championship game, which aired on FOX on January 25th. The 30-second ad featured the Bronco in various search and rescue scenarios, showcasing how the Bronco’s off-road capabilities can help search and rescue teams respond to calls for help. This ad will be running in various media until the end of April.
“The premise of the campaign is to prove what this Bronco is capable of. These organizations rely on it the most, and for them, relying on the Bronco with these rescues shows what the Bronco can offer,” Cope said. “It’s more about Bronco’s ability. If Bronco can do that in that extreme situation, I can rely on Bronco myself.”
The ad coincides with Ford’s partnership with NASAR, an initiative that grew out of an off-road trip Ford CEO Jim Farley took with Bronco customers in Moab, Utah, in late August. Farley saw firsthand how the Bronco helped Utah search and rescue teams navigate treacherous terrain during actual rescue operations, Cope said.
“He came back and talked to our team about how dependent some organizations were on the Ford Bronco. We knew that was true, but not to that extent,” Cope said. “So this campaign we’ve launched is the idea of answering that call.”
Separate from the advertisement, Ford will identify five fully equipped Ford Bronco SUVs to donate to under-resourced search and rescue organizations across the United States. Bronco Badlands model vehicles with the Sasquatch package are specifically designed to traverse tough terrain. Cope said it will have special features such as satellite Internet connectivity for reliable communications anywhere.
Ford has previously donated one Bronco to Kern County Fire and Rescue in California and Teton County Search and Rescue in Wyoming. Ford launched a nationwide search to identify the three final recipients.
What will Ford be like in 2026?
In September 2025, Ford launched its global brand marketing campaign “Ready, Set, Ford.” Its message emphasized that Ford is more than an automaker. We develop products that fit various lifestyles.
Ford’s first 60-second spot was called “Anthem” and featured a series of action shots, including a man speeding, a Ford Mustang racing car hurtling down a track, a Ford F-150 pickup truck in the countryside going off-road to catch a stray cow, and a quick cut to two people riding off-road in a Ford Bronco and jumping off a cliff in an exotic location. The spot ends with the announcer saying: “Someone once said, ‘Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.'” Then the words “Ready, Ready, Ford” appear.
The person who said this line was Henry Ford, the company’s founder.
Cope said the brand’s “Ready, Set, Ford” positioning will continue this year. But Ford will also focus on showing off its vehicles’ performance in three different ways.
The first focuses on off-road capabilities, with Ford highlighting its Bronco and Raptor vehicles. “The superiority we showed at the Baja 1000 Rally shows our capabilities in the off-road side of motorsports,” Ford said of the Raptor.
Next, Cope said Ford will display “adventure vehicles” such as the Bronco Tremor.
In closing, he said, “We have the ability to lead in class with our target audience, the F-Series. We have 49 years of truck leadership with the F-Series. We have an award-winning truck, the Maverick, which just won Truck of the Year. All three of these key pillars come together to demonstrate Ford’s capabilities, and that is the key message we will use in our 2026 marketing.”
EV advertising is also part of the plan
Even though Ford is overhauling its business model to shift spending toward hybrid and gasoline powertrains, Cope said there will still be a spot to promote electric vehicles this year.
“We’re still focused on the Mustang Mach-E, and we’ve had tremendous success with the Mustang Mach-E,” Cope said. “We still have the F-150 Lightning on dealer lots. Next year we’ll see some good messaging on those two products. Then we’ll ramp up for the year after next as we wrap up some of the announcements we’ve made previously.”
Last month, Ford announced it was transitioning its F-150 Lightning from an all-electric vehicle to a long-range electric vehicle as part of a review of its business and products. That means it will have a small gasoline engine and a range of 700 miles.
Regarding previous announcements, Cope is referring to Ford’s announcement in August that it would build a midsize all-electric pickup truck starting at $30,000 when it hits the market in 2027, with several more variants to follow, including the possibility of a midsize electric SUV from the same EV platform.
Ford targeted advertising
The competency message campaign will be seen in Ford’s “mainstream marketing acquisitions” such as television and other mainstream media. Ford will then make more targeted media buys to promote features and deals on specific vehicles to reach consumers who are ready to buy.
“For each of the different nameplates, we highlight three or four different features that we know that segment is disproportionately interested in,” Cope said. “Expedition customers may look very different than Maverick customers, but we are empowering each customer.”
Finally, Ford plans to run advertising to support sales events.
“We communicate the pricing strategy, but ultimately the pricing strategy is developed within Rob Caffle’s team (U.S. sales director) and the Ford business,” Cope said.
Product placement in movies
As for revealing that people might see Ford products incorporated into TV show and movie storylines this year, Cope was modest: “Movie studios would be pretty unhappy if I did that.”
But he added, “Competence and passion are our messages around the Ford framework, so you can imagine the kind of work we’re looking at.”
In 2025, Ford’s product placement included a cameo appearance by Farley on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” when Jimmy Fallon was broadcasting from Detroit. In it, Farley shows Fallon his new Bronco, and when he looks at the gear shift, it says “Other P.” Fallon hits it to see what it does, and both men end up with permed hair.
Another product placement last year was in Amazon’s crime thriller show “Cross,” where the star character drives a Mustang. Finally, to make sure no one would confuse Detroit Lions wide receiver Isaac Tessler with Tesla, another automaker that makes electric cars, Ford loaned Tessler an all-electric 2025 F-150 Ford Lightning to drive. The Ford family, which owns Ford, also owns the Lions.
“We have great partnerships with a number of creative agencies that have ties to Hollywood,” Cope said. “I have monthly meetings about these topics…about which products in film and television align most closely with Ford’s brand positioning. So we just consider them on a case-by-case basis. But how the media environment evolves is an important part of our strategy.”
The same is true on the media side of Ford, he said. Each brand campaign the company runs across its various media channels is reviewed on a case-by-case basis for the right message for its audience. And despite Ford’s current focus on rugged off-roading, Cope acknowledges there’s a vehicle for people who just want to drive the family north to the cabin. Think of Explorer.
“Overall…I think we have the right products in our portfolio to address (all) consumers,” Cope said. “Not every consumer needs to bungee jump or race on the sand, but our vehicles are capable enough to do just that.”
Jamie L. Lareau is senior auto writer for USA Today and covers Ford Motor Company for the Detroit Free Press. Contact Jamie at jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @Jalarowan. To sign up for our automotive newsletter. become a subscriber.
