New Ford ad features ‘Sailor Moon’ pitching the latest Focus

By Imad Khan Published November 15, 2016

If you’ve been on the fence on which car to purchase, maybe anime icon Sailor Moon can change your mind. Ford has just released a new ad featuring Sailor Moon upselling the new Ford Focus.

As millennials reach driving age, they’re starting to represent a new car buying market. This has Ford looking at different ways to appeal to them, most notably, nostalgia.

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“We’ve seen amazing success with our Overdubs series targeting millennials,” said Ford Communications Representative Debra Hotaling. “By tapping into properties like Dragon Ball Z, Metal Gear Solid and, now, Sailor Moon, we’ve seen their fans respond passionately and enthusiastically.”

According to Ford, these ads are more than just viral hits. The ads have been translating to more attention and traffic on Ford products. “We saw strong lifts in product consideration,” Hotaling added, “and ad recall was off the charts for Dragon Ball Z, but the great stuff is seeing the fans comment and respond, noting the little details we nailed (or missed). We’ve even seen a bunch of remixes and fan videos emulating Overdubs, title treatment and all!”

With Sailor Moon, Ford wants to target female millennials with greater focus. “We approached Sailor Moon to target female millennials, yes, but definitely focused on the Sailor Moon fan base to ultimately determine our distribution strategy.” Hotaling said, “We’re already seeing great sentiment coming in on YouTube and Facebook on this Sailor Moon execution.”

Like many anime fans, having the original voice actors they remember from their childhood is critically important, and Ford made that a priority. “Getting the original voice talent is actually something we focus on to make sure we honor each series and don’t exploit it. Fans will call you out for that and we see so many people giving us credit for using the talent they love.”

Maybe we’ll see some Sailor Moon decals on the Ford GT competing in Le Mans.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

Imad has been a gamer all his life. He started blogging about games in college and quickly started moving up to various…

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