Ford Motor Co.'s new North American marketing chief hopes a more combative advertising strategy will put the company's vehicles back on America's shopping list.

Barry Engle, who became general manager of Ford division marketing in January, is the latest in a string of executives to tackle Ford's slumping U.S. sales and diminished image. Sales of cars and light trucks bearing the Ford brand name and its blue-oval logo fell by 8% last year and are down by 15% for the first three months of this year. Ford brand sales in 2006 were one million vehicles behind the brand's sales in 2000.

"I want it to be cool to buy a Ford again," Mr. Engle says.

His tasks could be a formidable one. Chicago-area resident Scott Young, who had been a loyal Ford customer for more than 30 years, says he has been turned off by bad experiences at dealers and quality problems he has had with Ford vehicles. He says he will likely buy a Honda the next time he shops for a vehicle. "I don't know what they could do to get me to change my mind," Mr. Young said.

Mr. Engle's latest hook is a new ad campaign that kicks off today for Ford's the F-150 pickup truck, its best-selling model and one of its most profitable. One of the new commercials talks about safety and the F-150's five-star crash-test rating, which takes a jab at the new Toyota Tundra's four-star rating. The ad doesn't specifically name Toyota, but a Ford engineer in the ad says "some of the others didn't do as well."

"We're getting out there to tell our story and ask the customers to judge for themselves," said Ben Poore, Ford's truck-marketing manager. Toyota Motor Corp. spokesman Bill Kwong said the company is still studying the four-star rating because internal test showed that the Tundra deserved five stars.

Sales for the F-series this year are down 14% through March, but it is ahead of the new Chevrolet Silverado by about 20,000 vehicle sales, Autodata Corp. says. The F-Series has a significant lead over the Tundra, which Toyota redesigned to be more competitive against the pickups of the Big Three. But Toyota is pushing to more than double sales in the segment.

The new F-150 ad illustrates the more aggressive Us versus Brand X style that Mr. Engle is pushing at Ford, after last year's expensive Bold Moves campaign failed to arrest Ford's decline. An online documentary, which was part of the Bold Moves strategy and aimed at showing a company in the midst of a turnaround, fizzled before the stated goal of 50 episodes because of the intrusiveness of cameras in the workplace. And two marketing executives who were architects of the Bold Moves campaign have left the company.

For another important product, the Edge small sport-utility vehicle, Ford's ad agency enlisted the help of playwright and director David Mamet. The ads boast that the vehicle is quieter than a Lexus and quicker than a BMW.

Mr. Engle acknowledged that companies usually avoid giving free advertising to rivals. But he said the challenge ads are meant to "provoke people to try our products and making sure we are on the list." Mr. Engle also said Ford needs to face the fact that consumers are pitting the company's vehicles against those from Honda Motor Co. and Toyota when choosing what to buy. As a result, he aimed at giving Ford's marketing a more confident tone.

That approach spawned the Ford Challenge advertising campaign, which asks consumers to compare Ford vehicles to their toughest competitors. The first television, print and online ads, launched at the beginning of this year, focused on the Ford Fusion midsize sedan. The commercials showed consumers comparing the Fusion favorably against a Toyota Camry and a Honda Accord, both of which were mentioned by name.

Honda spokesman Sage Marie said the Ford ad serves as validation that the Accord is a benchmark for the segment. Toyota's Mr. Kwong said Ford wasn't making an "apples to apples" comparison because the ad features an all-wheel-drive Fusion compared with a front-wheel-drive Camry.
At first, the Fusion got what Ford insiders call the "launch and abandon" treatment, as ads for the car largely disappeared several months after the vehicle hit showrooms after its October 2005 launch. Mr. Engle found that at the end of 2006, two-thirds of consumers weren't aware the Fusion existed. "In the past, we gravitated disproportionately on our new stuff."

But after Ford renewed its push on the Fusion with the Ford Challenge ads this year, Fusion sales accelerated, up by almost 33% in 2007 through March over a year earlier.

Mr. Engle is using some of the lessons he learned as president of Ford Brazil. Five years ago, Ford faced product and marketing-strategy problems there similar to those it faces now in the U.S. When Mr. Engle took over the marketing position in North America, he realized there was a lot more the marketing team could do with the Fusion, which was the market leader in South America.

Mr. Engle's next high-profile project will be this summer's relaunch of the sedan formerly known as the Ford Five Hundred, which will be renamed the Taurus. Mr. Engle declined to discuss the campaign details because it was too early, but he did say the Five Hundred was another great product that suffered from lack of awareness and appreciation.

"I want it to be cool to buy a Ford again," Mr. Engle says.

To let your competitors brag about their specs and not return fire is to, at least in the eye of the consumer, concede that they offer superior specs than you