The finish on a car is usually something advertising takes care to preserve. Ford’s latest Brazilian campaign lets it disappear beneath layers of mud. Across a series of billboards, the dirt becomes the detail that gives the vehicle its appeal.
Created by Wieden+Kennedy São Paulo, ‘Redesigned by the Trail’ promotes the Bronco Sport and Ranger by focusing on the marks an off-road trip leaves behind. Its line, “Not every design comes from the factory”, gives the terrain a role in shaping how the vehicles look.
The idea supports Ford’s new brand positioning, which places greater emphasis on off-road capability. It also gives that positioning a simple visual expression: the vehicle’s condition suggests how it has been used.
A journey told across billboards
The first installation runs along the route to São Paulo/Guarulhos International Airport. Successive billboards show the Bronco Sport becoming progressively muddier, allowing the campaign to develop as people move past it.
The choice of sequence matters. A single image of a mud-covered car would communicate the association with off-roading immediately. Several images, with more dirt accumulating at each stage, introduce a sense of a journey without needing to show the route the vehicle has taken.
That makes the media placement part of the storytelling. Each billboard is understandable on its own, while the full sequence adds progression. The creative idea requires little explanation, an advantage in a setting where viewers have limited time to take in an advertisement.
It also keeps attention on the product. The imagined adventure is communicated through changes to the car’s appearance, so there is no need for a dramatic landscape to carry the message.
“Instead of showing the adventure itself, we wanted to show what it leaves behind on the car,” Wieden+Kennedy São Paulo’s Rafael Campello explains. “Mud is usually seen as something that needs to be removed, but here it becomes a way of revealing where the vehicle has been and what it is capable of taking on.”
From airport roads to agricultural shows
The campaign brings the Bronco Sport and Ranger together under one idea, with imagery intended to work across different media settings over time. Planned activity includes Brazil’s major agribusiness trade shows in 2027, where the focus will shift to the Ranger.
That context gives the same visual device a different emphasis. At an agricultural trade show, difficult terrain has a practical relevance to the audience. Mud can suggest the conditions a vehicle may encounter in everyday work as well as on a recreational trip.
The strength of ‘Redesigned by the Trail’ lies in how closely its execution follows the product claim. Ford wants to emphasise off-road use, and the campaign makes the consequences of that use desirable. Even its title gives the accumulated dirt a deliberate place in the vehicle’s appearance.
The mud is a visual shorthand, rather than a technical demonstration of performance. Its job is to make capability easy to recognise at a glance. As the Bronco Sport gets dirtier across the airport approach, Ford gives each passing driver the same invitation: picture where it has been.
