Toyota veteran driving change at Ford

By David Kiley

updated 1:49 p.m. ET Aug. 4, 2008

Can a company that practically invented the SUV convince consumers to buy its cars? For Ford Motor's marketing czar, James Farley, that is a career-defining question. Yes, Ford has nearly caught up to Toyota Motor in the quality stakes and it continues to sell more pickups in the U.S. than anyone. But in an age of lofty fuel prices, the famous blue oval can reasonably be compared to roadkill: flattened and none too fragrant.

If anyone can revive the brand, it may be Farley, who guided Toyota's marketing efforts in the U.S. before being lured away 10 months ago by Ford CEO Alan Mulally.

Still, consider the challenge. On July 24, Ford announced the biggest quarterly loss in its 105-year history — a gag-inducing $8.7 billion — as well as plans to turbocharge its move away from gas-guzzling SUVs. Putting the company back in the black will mean selling millions of fuel-efficient sedans and small cars. And so far this year, Ford has 10.4 percent of the passenger car market, half what it had in 1995. Farley, who has been cutting through the bureaucracy and getting rid of superfluous marketing people, sees his challenge this way: "It's not so much convincing people who have walked away from us," he says. "It's engaging people who don't think of Ford as a car brand." If the 45-year-old Farley prevails, company insiders say he has a decent chance of succeeding Mulally, who is 62.

When Mulally became CEO in September 2006, he quickly concluded that Ford's marketing operation was broken. Ford had been through five failed strategies for its cars in as many years because no one could agree on what the brand stood for anymore. At first, Mulally flailed, reversing a decision to dump the well-known Taurus name and publicly advocating reviving the "Have You Driven a Ford Lately?" slogan. Then he went looking for a new marketing chief. "Given where we were and where we needed to get to, I felt someone from outside would break some molds," says Mulally, who came from Boeing.

Taking the challenge
As it happens, a relative of Chairman Bill Ford had been urging him to hire Farley. Besides noting the obvious merits of Farley's resume, Bill Ford was intrigued by Farley's emotional connection to Ford. When the two men met, Farley told of his beloved grandfather who had worked at Ford and sold Lincolns in Grosse Pointe, Mich., in the 1920s. The grandson seemed an ideal fit: an outsider, but one with Ford in his blood. Farley also had a reputation for pushing conservative Toyota to take risks that paid off, such as bringing small, youth-oriented Scion vehicles to SUV-crazed America. Mulally and Farley got together last summer in the corporate jet hangar at Los Angeles International Airport to talk. Mulally offered unprecedented authority over global marketing and a big say in what vehicles Ford sold worldwide. "Jim seemed born for the job," Mulally says.

Farley had recently been promoted to run the Lexus brand. He and his wife, Lia, had adopted a baby girl. Was this the moment to jump from ascendant Toyota to flailing Ford? One of his biggest concerns was whether Mulally's shake-up would endure. It's a legitimate worry. "Ford has to change a lot for a maverick approach like Farley's to take hold," says Anne Hanson, a former Ford marketing executive. But, she adds: "Saving Ford has to appeal to one's ego rather than playing it relatively safe at Toyota." Farley told his wife he wanted to do "something important." He knows it sounds corny. "But helping Toyota rack up another $12 billion in profits isn't much of a legacy." Plus Ford generally pays better than Toyota.

After mulling the offer for two weeks, Farley said yes. His decision stunned the industry. The move was so unexpected that Toyota hadn't even made Farley sign a noncompete agreement. He went to Ford with at least five years' worth of Toyota's plans in his head (though he insists they will stay there).

Despite his reputation, Farley was received warily. On one hand, say current and former staffers, people were heartened that a Toyota big wheel living in California thought enough of Ford's chances to move to Dearborn, Mich., Ford's headquarters. On Dec. 3, Farley introduced himself to several hundred staffers. He repeated Mulally's mantra of creating one global brand and breaking down silos. To show that he felt people's pain, he talked about the deaths of his premature twins and the loss of his cousin, former Saturday Night Live star Chris Farley. James Farley's candor seemed alien at buttoned-up Ford. "He was talking to people losing a lot of hope," says a Ford manager who attended the meeting. "While it played well with some, it put a lot of others off." But even Ford diehards understood something had to give. "There was one slogan we all knew that wasn't in the room," says Ford Div. General Marketing Manager John Felice. "Save the Company."

Finding the best players
In early December, Farley sat down with Toby Barlow and George Rogers, respectively executive creative director and CEO of Team Detroit, the WPP agency that handles Ford's ad business. Farley got right to the point. "Do you guys play Fantasy Baseball?" he asked. Both men had heard of the virtual leagues put together by baseball fanatics, but neither belonged to one. Farley said he wanted Team Detroit to put together a kind of fantasy league, scouring the planet for the most forward-thinking and creative talent. Farley didn't care where the people came from. They could come from WPP, PR firms, universities, or digital agencies. They could be freelancers. They could be from Detroit or Dubai. "Team Detroit should be like a general manager of a baseball team," he says. "I'm looking to them to find me the best players for every game."

Farley was lobbing a bomb at the cozy relationship that had evolved between Ford and WPP, which tended not to look outside for fresh ideas. Barlow, a relative newcomer who lives not in Detroit's suburbs but in the city's beleaguered downtown, welcomed the Farley plan. "We have talented people here for sure," he says. "But we'd have to be nuts to think the smartest people in the world are all parking their cars in Dearborn."

Barlow had less than four months to create a new strategy and ads in time for an April dealer meeting. He mined his Rolodex and put together a "league" comprising 20 handpicked copywriters, art directors, and Web-focused creative talent. They represent a cross-section of disciplines and backgrounds; among them are freelancers and staffers from inside and outside WPP's roster of agencies. Several had worked for Nissan, BMW, and Apple — whose brand campaigns had impressed Farley and Barlow.

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