To launch Ford’s darkest and toughest car, we took it to the darkest and toughest place on Earth: Longyearbyen. The world’s northernmost town in the world, where the sun is gone for 100 days and darkness takes over, bringing temperatures down to -40ºC.

At the centre of the 4-minute documentary are the daily journey of three residents – and Ranger Black Edition drivers: a carpenter, an airport ground controller and an arctic farmer. As we see our heroes at work and hear their individual stories, we realise how they can build their lives and find happiness despite all the dangers brought by the dark and cold winter season.

In the end, one thing is clear: not everyone can handle darkness and toughness like the people of Longyearbyen. Not every car can handle darkness and toughness like the Ranger Black Edition.

The campaign launched in the depths of the continental European winter with a teasing 30 second trailer on owned social channels, to reward fans and followers. Once anticipation was built, the full documentary was published with paid support to encourage engagement.

The Pan-European campaign, published across 14 markets, had a high social- & digital-focus. Partnering with Unruly distribution to help deliver the film allowed us to achieve cost-effective views from new audiences through a network of high-quality online lifestyle publications.

Throughout the duration of the 6-week campaign, markets also made use of the impactful content in more traditional channels. Print ads captured audience attention with full page magazine placements showing off the Shadow Black paint job in the Polar nightscape.

The market reception for the hero content was so encouraging that the documentary was re-rendered & mixed for cinema advertising for tactically geo-located screenings.

Across Facebook, YouTube and Unruly distribution, the celebration of darkness reached over 8m people. YouTube and Facebook recorded 3.5 million video views and a further 491k views were garnered through the Unruly distribution network.

With all 3,000 purchasable vehicles sold, the ‘100 Days of Dark’ campaign reached 2,669% more consumers than Ranger Black editions in existence, achieving the objective to build wider nameplate and primary brand awareness.

In addition to reach, these social channels registered an engagement rate of 46%, surpassing 2017 campaign benchmarking by 10%. This demonstrates that social content doesn’t necessarily need all the action to happen in the first three seconds to be engaging.

Or just maybe a dark car, in a dark environment is more engaging than you might think?