Chevy’s Anti-Ford Ad Campaign Completely Backfires
In the year since the ad campaign, F-150 sales skyrocketed as Silverado fell further behind.
As a fellow Ford enthusiast, you probably saw last year’s Chevy Silverado truck bed commercials and wanted to throw your TVs out the window. In the clip, the Chevy pitch guy shows “real” people what happens when cinder blocks are dumped into an empty (non-lined) F-150 bed and a Silverado bed. Since the Ford F-150 has an aluminum bed there were more dents and dings than the Chevy. The moral of their story? Chevy is a better truck! Wrong!
Well, now it’s been a full year since the ad first aired and Torque News decided to take a deep dive to see if this bit of negative advertisement worked for Chevrolet. Surprise, surprise, truck buyers saw right through this skewed ad and bought more Ford F-150s than ever, while Silverados saw decreasing sales each quarter. The best way to compare is with market share, to see which full-size truck dominates. As Torque News points out, Ford has ruled market share by a large margin, each quarter. Rising from 36.4% to 38.9% over the course of the year, the Ford hasn’t suffered one bit. However, the Silverado saw the opposite effect. Silverado market share tumbled from a 2nd place 24.9% to 21.6% and into 3rd place, behind the Dodge Ram.
So, why did this bit of marketing not work for Chevy? That’s the question that is probably leaving the Chevrolet marketing team scratching their heads. For Ford F-150 owners, the reasons are more obvious. First, it should be said that any commercial putting a brand new F-150 side-by-side with a Silverado will show just how much better the F-150 looks. The front ends of the trucks couldn’t be more different, with F-150 looking striking and bold and Silverado looking generic.
The ad was a major loss for Chevy, and inadvertently, it helped the sales of F-150s.
So, we would like to thank Chevy for creating more Ford truck owners.
Torque News reports, however, that there might be a more psychological reason for this. They present the idea that maybe with all the negative political ads that dominated 2016, perhaps audiences were turned off by Chevy’s blatant attempt to talk badly about competition. Instead of trying to come up with positive things to say about the Silverado, they just tore down the F-150, with a slanted, unfair comparison.
The truth is truck buyers aren’t dumb. Chevy insulted their intelligence by showing scenarios that are completely far-fetched. If you want to show that a truck bed is stronger, that’s fine, but give viewers a real-world comparison. No one in their right mind would do this to their truck, even if their bed is titanium, without a bed liner. In fact, the aluminum is a strong metal, that reduces the weight of the vehicle and increases performance. So, if you just put the bed liner in, which most truck buyers are going to do automatically, then you see why this whole campaign is ridiculous.
Any way you cut it, the Chevrolet ad was a major loss for Chevy, and inadvertently, it helped the sales of F-150s. So, probably for the first time on this site, we would like to thank Chevy for creating more Ford truck owners.
