Lincoln ad spoofs elevate brand's exposure

Did Lincoln's ads just do the unthinkable: help the stodgy luxury brand break through to a hipper audience?

Call it a happy accident, but Lincoln marketing officials say they're cheering about the response to a pair of ads for the MKC crossover featuring Matthew McConaughey. That response includes two spoofs, by Conan O'Brien and Ellen DeGeneres, that lit up the Internet and social networks last month.

When Jon Pearce got word of the DeGeneres satire early Sept. 22, he and 39 of his colleagues immediately gathered around a laptop to watch it and laughed. They viewed it again later that afternoon when it aired on DeGeneres' talk show.

Pearce, global CCO of Hudson Rouge, the Lincoln ad team that developed the McConaughey spots, said the parody was a welcome bonus. "We're flattered," he said. "Just to get out into the public mind with parodies says you've achieved a certain amount of notoriety."

The ads themselves evoke McConaughey's character on the HBO miniseries "True Detective," in which he plays Rust Cohle, a detective given to cryptic monologues. Lincoln lined up McConaughey -- a romantic-comedy regular and this year's Oscar winner for best actor -- in an effort to appeal to younger, more hip buyers, particularly women. It's part of a two-year partnership with the actor, who also starred in the 2011 thriller The Lincoln Lawyer.

The first ad with McConaughey behind the wheel of the MKC aired Sept. 6, during college football broadcasts, and the spoofs came soon after, spreading through social networks such as YouTube and Facebook. O'Brien's version, which aired Sept. 11, layered in bizarre dialogue from the HBO show.

DeGeneres' had her cracking wise from the back seat of the MKC. 

As of Friday, the DeGeneres video had generated 3.9 million views on YouTube, while O'Brien's had 234,251. The two original McConaughey ads had 1.3 million views combined. 

"It's hard to put a dollar amount on earned media," said Pearce, referring to videos and other promotional assets that are shared among friends and therefore prized by advertisers. "We couldn't ask for better," he said. 

Moreover, the combination of ads and parodies appears to be helping consideration of the Lincoln brand, said Jessica Caldwell, senior analyst for Edmunds.com. Lincoln brand consideration on Edmunds.com for the week ended Sept. 21 was 1.6 percent, up from 1.2 percent the previous week, representing a roughly 31 percent lift in consideration. 

The shopping traffic was the highest it has been all year, Caldwell said. 

She said that the segments poked more fun of McConaughey than Lincoln, so they didn't come across as disparaging the brand. 

"I'd say it was a coup for the brand and the ad team, as more people are undoubtedly talking about the car than ever before," Caldwell said. 

Dan Marks, a dealer at Libertyville Lincoln in Libertyville, Ill., and chairman of the Lincoln National Dealer Council, credits the McConaughey ads with boosting September MKC sales by a few units, and said they particularly influenced female customers. "We have an A player now who is representing our brand," he said. 

The parodies haven't hurt either. "Some exposure is better than no exposure," Marks said.

Indeed, just getting noticed would be a step forward for Lincoln, which, after peaking as the nation's top luxury brand in 1998, has shriveled to eighth place. The ads come at a pivotal time for Lincoln and its newly appointed president, Kumar Galhotra, who took the reins in September. 

After a strong start for the redesigned MKZ sedan, Lincoln has four new products planned over the next four years, including a large luxury sedan. It's also launching a re-engineered Navigator this month.

Dave Rivers, Lincoln's marketing communications manager, said the fresh product, combined with the new marketing efforts, is paying off. 

Lincoln's U.S. sales are up 13 percent this year through September. And early into the launch of the MKC, Lincoln is getting conquest rates of almost 50 percent, Rivers said, with nearly one-third of that coming from other premium brands. 

He acknowledges that it will take time to change the perception of Lincoln from a car that gets you to and from the airport to one that people love to drive.

"We know it's a long journey," he said, "but we are very confident in the long term for the brand." 

Daniel Gorrell, president of marketing consulting firm AutoStrategem in Tustin, Calif., said using McConaughey was a "step in the right direction" for Lincoln. But for a brand that needs to clarify its identity as something distinct from Ford, he said, the ads don't pay enough attention to the product. Both Lincoln ads are "great publicity pieces for Matthew McConaughey and not much more," he said. 

Rivers said that the goal of the ads was to make sure that those unfamiliar with Lincoln "stop and take notice," and that McConaughey was the right draw for the target market of men and women ages 35 to 50. Pearce said the actor's transition from soft romantic leads to edgier roles nicely mirrored Lincoln's ongoing transformation. 

"We made a conscious decision that we weren't going to use Matthew as a traditional pitchman listing off features A, B and C," Pearce said. "That doesn't feel authentic."