WATCH! Ford just told every other truck commercial to sit down and shut up by handing the Raptor to the one actor who could make “I balance books” sound like a death threat.
Jon Bernthal. From the set of The Accountant. The guy who apparently gave Ben Affleck a ride in his Raptor between takes, got him permanently hooked (Affleck now owns two and directed this thing), and then showed up to narrate the truck’s origin story like he was personally responsible for every dune it ever shredded.?
Most brands would have gone with some polished pretty boy who says “adventure” while carefully avoiding any actual dirt. Ford looked at Bernthal—the gravel-voiced, “let me tell you something” intensity machine who already owns multiple Raptors—and said, “Yeah. Him. Let him explain how the engineers got this monster killed six times and kept building it anyway.”?
The spot (directed by Affleck, starring Bernthal alongside the actual Ford Racing engineers who lived in Baja long enough to pick up Spanish) is less celebrity endorsement and more “we asked the one guy who already treats these trucks like a religion and he said hell yes.” He delivers lines about relentlessness and making monsters while wheeling a first-gen Raptor through the desert like it’s a casual Tuesday. It’s the rare ad where the actor doesn’t have to act like he loves the product—he just has to stop suppressing the part of him that already does.?
So yes, Ford marketing: respect. You didn’t cast a face. You cast the badass who introduced the director to the truck on a movie set about an accountant, owns the damn thing, and can make “the project got killed six times” sound both historically accurate and mildly threatening.
Name a better actor to be your truck ad spokesperson than this. We’ll wait.