When a 122-year-old truck brand and a 100-year-old ski brand make something fun.

How it started

This one started with a LinkedIn outreach to Ford's brand strategy team. After making the strategic case for a Ford × Fischer partnership — referencing the broader pattern of automotive brands collaborating with ski manufacturers — I was connected to the Ford Ranger truck team in October. There I pitched a vehicle-anchored demo tour: Ford-provided truck, Fischer demos at consumer events early winter, industry events late winter.

The pivot

Wrap graphics stalled. Nothing landed with Ford. So I revived a dead Fischer SMU project — a Ranger 102 in 183cm with a wild tiger-stripe graphic — and repositioned it as the Ford Ranger Raptor LTD edition. Inventory to retail in 30 days. 30 pairs available to consumers, 15 reserved for gifting and seeding.

The film

To launch the partnership, we wrote and creative-directed a film built around the truck and the skis — letting the wrap, the wild graphic, and the New England backroads do most of the talking. Production partner: Out of Collective.

What ran

The partnership ran the full season: Ford-branded Ranger Raptor at four consumer demo events, the Winter Sports Market Show in Utah, and the American Birkebeiner in Wisconsin.

We anchored the season with a monthly sweepstakes — a pair of skis and limited-edition Ford Ranger swag — captured through the Fischer website and on-site at events. The program pulled over 35,000 entries, with the resulting database shared between Ford and Fischer.

Ford was thrilled. We're in conversations on year two.

The takeaway

A direct outreach turned into a co-branded SKU at retail, a full-season demo program, and 35K+ shared leads — without an agency or a media buy. The fastest unlock was a creative reframe: when the partnership stalled on truck wraps, the answer was sitting in Fischer's inventory the whole time.