James Franco and tiger tease Ford Super Bowl commercial

Sat, 01 Feb 2014

Ford has just released a teaser for its Super Bowl ad, and unlike just about every other automaker, it seems that the Blue Oval is going to make us wait until Sunday to see the full spot. The teaser is, um, strange.

It stars James Franco, who believes he is Ron Riggle, the comedian, Fox NFL Sunday host and retired Marine lieutenant colonel. There's also a tiger. The vague spot has Franco claiming that "this is no ordinary commercial." You'll note on the bottom right, there's a Ford logo and the hashtag #nearlydouble.

According to Automotive News, it's part of a massive viral effort being pushed forward by Ford and its dealerships. Ford sent different teasers and "vignettes" to dealership employees and asked them to share them on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, in the hopes of creating a viral effect.

"If we have 3,000-plus dealers and there are 100 employees in each dealership, that's 300,000 employees working in dealerships," marketing boss Jim Farley told AN. "If everyone has 100 friends on Facebook, that's 30 million people. This is not just a program to expose our ad to dealer employees and be nice. We get almost Super Bowl scale by sending it to employees."

We'll have to wait until Sunday to see what the entire 90-second spot entails, but feel free to speculate in the meantime. And remember, Ford's ad will air before the Super Bowl, so take that into account if you really want to know what's up. Scroll down for the teaser.

By Brandon Turkus