My Take | Ford's Indian advertising campaign ill-advised

If it was publicity Ford Motors was seeking, it got it in trunk loads.

For the launch of its Figo model, the Indian unit of the American carmaker must have wanted special attention paid to the bigger storage area.

But the advertising agencies employed got a little more creative than the Ford bosses intended, coming up with a series of colourful ads that raced away in the media in a way those at Ford never expected.

One of the ads, which were not released publicly but went viral on the internet, showed three women bound and gagged in the boot with former Italian prime minister and notorious ladies' man Silvio Berlusconi smiling from the driver's seat alongside the slogan "Leave your worries behind with the Figo's extra-large boot".

Whether it was plain goofiness or someone thought the Indian rope trick was part of the Kama Sutra, we'll never know. But it sure put Ford on the road to a public relations disaster.

The creative geniuses behind the advertisement simply overlooked the fact it was going to be speaking to an audience saturated with media reports of rape and harassment of women over the previous few weeks.