Harrison Ford doesn’t do many TV commercials. And he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to do a Super Bowl commercial for Jeep.
For Olivier Francois, the news was most unwelcome. Francois is the global chief marketing officer of auto giant Stellantis and, just before December, had been given a “mission impossible” assignment by John Elkann, the company’s chairman. He wanted the company to run a strong Super Bowl commercial for Jeep, something Francois has done many times in the recent past. Francois is, after all, the marketing executive who has supervised the creation of memorable, anthemic Big Game spots that have used Eminem to signal an economic resurgence in Detroit; Clint Eastwood to exhort a post-recession U.S. to get back out on the field and play, because it was “halftime in America; Bill Murray to re-create the premise of his 1993 movie “Groundhog Day” for Ram Trucks; Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan in surprising turns to spur Americans to buy the company’s cars.
In Sunday night’s spot, Ford tells the audience that “we get to write our own stories” and that freedom in American is “Yes. Or No. Or maybe.” The ad includes scenes of Jeep electric vehicles as well as those with combustion engines. “Freedom is the roar of one man’s engine. And the silence of another’s,” the actor says. “We won’t always agree on which way to go, but our differences can be our strength.”
Toward the end, Ford gets into an electric Jeep Wrangler after pulling out the charging plgs, and says, “Choose what makes you happy,” quickly adding: “This Jeep makes me happy…. even though my name is Ford.”
By his own count, Francois has since 2011 crafted 35 Super Bowl commercials, including two that ran on Fox Sunday night. But his chairman had requested the impracticable. Francois had no plans to run a Super Bowl ad for Jeep, had wooed no celebrities, and had bought no commercial time from Fox, which had already declared it was sold out.
Getting a Jeep ad put together under such circumstances, says the executive, was “pure madness.”
The prospect was even more so for this year’s Game, because, as of Sunday morning, Stellantis was the only automaker running commercials in the event — something extremely unusual. For decades, General Motors, BMW and Volkswagen, among others have spent billions on Super Bowl ads for years, with commercial breaks often resembling a metaphorical parking lot due to the sheer number of autos getting hyped. Automakers spent $49 million on Super Bowl ads in 2024, according to ad-tracker MediaRadar, and $56 million in 2023.
Many have dropped out after spending the past few years touting electric vehicles, tapping actors like Will Ferrell and Mike Meyers or even working with “Sopranos” creator David Chase in an ad that reunites a few former cast members form the series. With President Donald Trump coming into office, there is a growing sense that such products may be less in favor with consumers, but Francois thinks many of the auto giants have been pushing the new models in the wrong way.
“All these people were not listening” to U.S. car buyers, Francois says. “As a maker of electric cars, I would love for people to massively prefer electric. It would be better for my business and probably good for the planet as well,” but he has to acknowledge that not all Americans have embraced that attitude. “In America, people want, I think, to have a choice,” and not be made to feel that EVs are being forced upon them. Some don’t like the idea of having to charge a car. Others find the price unreasonable. “People want to be offered options.”
Creating a Super Bowl commercial is already a chaotic job without the additional aforementioned pressures. The price of a 30-second Big Game spot has risen exponentially over the years, up 67% to $7 million in 2024, according to data from MediaRadar, compared with $4.2 million in 2014. Add to that costs of lining up celebrity talent and rights to popular music, setting up social-media marketing and retail programs — and, often, paying for a broader package of advertising inventory with the TV network showing the football spectacular. When the final tally comes in, the company’s CFO and Board of Directors will want proof that the gambit was worth it.
That’s why most Super Bowl marketers start devising their plans months in advance. Executives at Bud Light, which has sponsored the event for decades, “pretty much start” thinking about next year once this year’s Super Bowl ends, says Todd Allen, senior vice president of marketing for the Anheuser-Busch InBev brand. “We really start the process a couple of months after last year’s Super Bowl ended. We start with a post-campaign post-mortem — how did everything go?” explains Jessica Grigoriou, senior vice president of marketing for condiments at Unilever, who oversaw this year’s Super Bowl plans for Hellmann’s mayonnaise. “We come up with multiple concepts. We do a lot of consumer testing to really understand, you know, is this resonating?”
Francois had mere weeks. At first, his team contemplated a comedic concept that it had already devised. Francois didn’t think it was right for Ford, but one of the ad agencies the company works with had brought it to the actor’s representatives at UTA, and were told Ford would take a meeting. Francois was told that Ford “likes it,” but the executive was wary. “I’m surprised,” he thought. “It is not the way I picture him.”
His instincts were right. When a high-level teleconference was convened to discuss the matter, Ford was noticeably absent. Instead, Jim Berkus, the former UTA chairman who works with Ford, instead had bad news. “This is going to be a very short meeting,” Francois recalls Berkus saying. Ford “was already not inclined. He’s not an advertising guy. He doesn’t do this thing. He doesn’t need the money. He doesn’t have time. And so, this is not happening.”
Even as agencies and teams dusted off the comedy idea, Francois had been working on a different concept. During a barbecue dinner at his home in Miami, Francois shared his dilemma with a friend, Ed Razek, the former chief marketing officer who developed much of the promotional outreach around the Victoria’s Secret retail chain. Ford should be treated as a respected figure, Francois said. “Everyone likes him, you know, he’s not really too political,” he recalls saying. “I would use him to share his wisdom,” and touch upon themes that resonate with Jeep, such as freedom and adventure. Within a day, Razek texted Francois a few lines that he might use in ad copy. And Francois had worked some of it into a potential script.
With Berkus moving to end the call, Francois asked him if Ford would be comfortable with a more serious, inspirational commercial that had the actor telling audiences to “choose what makes you happy.” The phrase changed the mood.
From there, Ford took part in a shoot with only a few people attending. Executives devised the end joke that used Ford’s last name while on set. The actor initially wasn’t a fan, Francois says. “At first, he was hesitant, because that’s not the mood. We were in something very serious.” But the executive convinced him to try it out, knowing that Ford had approval rights over his performance. “Do it and we’ll see,” he told the actor. “I may be right, I may be wrong. It might be great and if it isn’t great, you’re not going to see it. And if I think it’s great, you’ll still have a chance to kill it.” Ford decided to mouth his last name at the end, a decision that caused observers to break out in laughter. The idea stuck.
Jeep hoped to cram all of Ford’s remarks into a 60-second commercial, Francois said, but the results were lackluster. The speech was too crowded, and Ford’s lines needed room to breathe if they were to resonate. “You had no introduction, You had no ending. You had no room for music,” he says. Instead of making cuts, the team added scenes of Jeep vehicles on the road and even a few with soldiers to underscore how freedom has been hard-won. The length of the commercial extended — to a whopping two minutes.
Fox initially told Jeep that “we don’t have room for you.” Stellantis wasn’t a sponsor of the 2024 game, so although it is a major advertiser throughout the year, it wasn’t a so-called “incumbent.” Most of the sponsors of the prior Super Bowl get an option to sing up again before the inventory is opened to others. At the last minute, however, Fox had to contend with a series of cancellations from sponsors who felt they could no longer advertise due to the horrific California wildfires. Some of that activity helped Fox to sell its remaining inventory for $8 million per 30 seconds.
Now all Francois had to hope the commercial pleases and inspires rather than rankles. He acknowledges some people may see it as touching on politics — something he hopes to avoid. The ad will only succeed “if politics are removed from the question. I’m not sure they will,” he adds, because determining how different groups of consumers will react to a commercial created so quickly is difficult. The ad could be accused of backing away from hard-sell for EVs or lumped in with environmental concerns, both of which, he says, “are bull—-.”
“Look, I need to sell a little bit of everything,” says Francois. “I still have a lot of love for electric, but “I need to say something that people will connect with.” Like Jack Ryan, Rusty Sabich, Indiana Jones, Han Solo and other characters he has played in the movies, it’s up to Harrison Ford to deliver results in a tight squeeze.