Mustang II Network - 1974 Mustang - Young Car With a Tradition and a Future - Page 12

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74 Mustang - Young Car With a Tradition and a Future

MARKETING THE FIRST MUSTANG The basic Mustang was to be sharp inside and out. Color-keyed, all vinyl interior, color-keyed wall-to-wall carpeting, foam bucket seats, sports steering wheel, three-speed manual floor shift, front arm rests, cigaret lighter, automatic courtesy and glove-box lights, curved side glass, wrap-around bumpers with bumper guards front and back, full wheel covers, parallel-action windshield wipers, padded instrument panel, front seat belts, self-adjusting brakes, peppy six-cylinder engine - all were standard. High perceived value in the basic Mustang. An almost limitless variety of options besides. But every car a Mustang. It was a key decision. Another involved a straightforward approach in advertising. To get away from the superficial and the flamboyant. To tell the product story. A third was to headline the car's price in every ad. It was $2,368, and it was hammered home. Soon after concept approval, Iacocca brought Ford Division's advertising agency, the J. Walter Thompson Co., Inc., into the picture. At first only two agency forward planners, and later others names to a "hot-project" staff, worked on the Mustang. They were isolated in a locked office away from the floors occupied by the agency in Detroit's Buhl Building. Their hideout was known as the "tomb." Only three JWT people had a key (office cleaning personnel had none) and clean-up work was done by security guards. Even waste paper was burned by guards under the watchful eye of the forward planners. The agency's first assignments were these: To recommend precise positioning of the car - inside or outside the current Ford models and series line-ups. To come up with a vehicle for communicating the excitement and personality of the new car to everyone who would be involved in bringing it to the market. To find a name for the new car. For a communications vehicle, the agency recommended a film, and set about producing one. Ford agreed to van the first, fragile, costly prototype to the Michigan Proving Grounds in Romeo with Ford personnel riding in cars ahead and behind. JWT met the van with a crew of 25 artists, writers and photographers.

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