Ford taps Sydney Sweeney, Dee Bryant and Kai Lenny for new ‘Built Ford Proud’ work

Ford has tapped five agency partners—and a trio of celebrity Ford owners—to revitalize its “Built Ford Proud” ad campaign with a new multichannel marketing push.

Featuring actress Sydney Sweeney, big wave surfer Kai Lenny and professional stunt driver Dee Bryant, the series of ads were crafted to take “Built Ford Proud”—dormant for three years before now—in a new direction. The new spots center on the stars’ connections to and pride in their vehicles: a restored 1969 Bronco, an F-Series pickup truck, and a number of Mustang sports cars, respectively.

The work was developed in collaboration with five agencies—Wieden+Kennedy New York, Artemis, Mindshare, VMLY&R and BBDO—and will see a widespread multichannel rollout in the coming weeks across social, digital and broadcast and connected TV, with each spotlighted Ford owner getting a commercial that tells their story.

“The campaign springs from a simple notion: Ford drivers do amazing things with their vehicles,” Eric Helin, global executive creative director at W+K, said in a statement. “These aren’t isolated examples, or one-off collabs with celebrities, they’re authentic stories,” he said, noting that he hopes the new “Built Ford Proud” work is “just the beginning of telling” Ford owners’ stories.

In addition, there will also be a number of video and merchandise tie-ins with the campaign’s three stars.

With Sweeney, known for her roles in hit series including “Euphoria” and “The White Lotus,” Ford will be debuting a “female-forward workwear collection” that it’s producing in collaboration with Dickies, according to a statement from the company. In support of the campaign, she will also host a series of vehicle maintenance tutorials on her TikTok channel, Syd’s Garage, which boasts 1.5 million followers.

With Bryant, who co-founded the nonprofit Association of Women Drivers and is known as one of the entertainment industry’s only Black female stunt drivers, Ford arranged for her to show off her skills behind the wheel of a new 2024 Mustang in a series of social videos titled “Stuff Only Dee Should Do.”

And with Lenny, who’s based on the Hawaiian island of Maui, Ford worked to create a line of surfboards with colorways that match the automaker’s Super Duty trucks. Eight of the custom Ford boards will be donated to Lenny’s charity, the Positively Kai Foundation, which works to inspire youth on Maui to pursue their passions.

The work is a departure from the original themes of “Built Ford Proud,” which was first launched in 2018.

“We talked a lot about our creds as an automaker and why people should believe in us” during the original “Built Ford Proud” marketing push, Helin said. “But as we looked at continuing it this year, we wanted to turn the spotlight and attitude outward—toward the millions of drivers who get behind the wheel of a Ford vehicle every day.”

The new work is scheduled to run through the end of June.