Ford And Jimmy Fallon Turn To Twitter For Help Writing Lincoln Super Bowl Ad

Ford is launching a big marketing campaign to revive its Lincoln brand, and apparently Twitter will play a big role in those efforts, according to a story in Bloomberg.

The automaker has hired Jimmy Fallon to write Lincoln’s first-ever Super Bowl ad, which will be based on tweets. Neither Bloomberg nor the #SteerTheScript website offers many details about how Fallon plans to turn a bunch of tweets into a 60-second TV commercial — the website says, “The writing process will begin with a tweet from Jimmy and then after that it’s up to you, and Jimmy, where the story goes.”

Fallon, meanwhile, tweeted, “It’s a new way of advertising. Fun!”  The suggestion period starts at noon Pacific on Wednesday, and there’s even a big countdown clock on the #SteerTheScript site.

Bloomberg reports that the first TV ad in the new campaign airs today. It was written in more traditional fashion, featuring an actor playing Abraham Lincoln and highlighting past celebrities who have driven Lincoln vehicles. Ford is also launching a new brand called the Lincoln Motor Company, “a marketing term meant to create distance between the brand’s vehicles and mainstream Ford models built in the same factories.”

I’m not sure whether the social media savviness of the Super Bowl ad is going to make a big difference to potential Lincoln owners, but it does seem like an interesting way to stand out from all the other ads, and to suggest that the Lincoln brand isn’t as boring as you might think.

If you want a broader sense of Ford’s plans for the future, you can check out this interview I did with CTO Paul Mascarenas in September and video from his visit to the TechCrunch office.