Summary:

Challenge - Ford PAS (formerly Ford Academy of Manufacturing Sciences, FAMS) is an
academically rigorous program that introduces high school students to the concepts, challenges and skills necessary in post secondary classrooms and in the workplace they will face as adults. The Ford PAS program had been marketed for three years to area high schools, universities and businesses and established a foothold locally
in the Detroit area. In trying to expand the program, Ford found that the brand suffered from the perception of being too vocationally oriented and this prevented access to places Ford thought it needed to be and from growing beyond the Detroit manufacturing region where it was best known.

Strategy - The company convened a Branding Summit‚ with six key decision makers with FPAS, Ford and EDC, the curriculum content developer, to confirm goals and
objectives, messages, audiences of the new brand, criteria for developing new brand names and tagline, and determine preliminary logo and design directions. Summarized summit findings served as a blueprint for repositioning the brand.

Result - Without losing momentum, the new FPAS brand was launched and has
continued to receive favorable recognition among the media, the secondary and post-secondary education community, and businesses. Today the program claims a national and growing network and is the Ford Motor Company’s premier partnership program with public education.

Credits :

Client : Ford Motor Company: Ford Partnership for Advanced Studies (FPAS)  - www.fordpas.org

Creative Firm : Widmeyer Advertising and Design - www.widmeyer.com  
Creative Director  : Lee Jenkins

Designer  : Adam Clement

Images  : www.gettyone.com