If you hurry you can still see one way that Ford just keeps on using Facebook for paid advertising even as rival GM has pulled its paid ads (and invested in Manchester United as a way to reach Chinese car-buyers). And next week, you can read a report that presumably will underscore how many advertisers still agree with Ford, not GM.

Ford is currently running ads for Ford-logoed licensed merchandise such as t-shirts and toy cars with the Blue Oval logo that the company just got out of hock. The idea is to promote them for Father's Day, so they're June 1st through 10th in advance of Father's Day on the 17th. The ads — a first for Ford's licensing operations — appear on the right-hand side of Facebook user profiles to visit Ford and motor sports-related FB pages, according to Bloomberg.Continue reading...

The Blue Oval is back where it belongs.

Last week we noted that Ford "hasn't yet gotten its iconic Blue Oval out of hock, but additional ratings-agency bumps of Ford bonds are expected to move that moment closer, as Ford seeks to regain control of one of the major assets it pledged as collateral in its private-borrowing spree before the Great Recession."

That day has come. With Moody's Investors Service's move today to upgrade Ford's debt, Ford has taken its iconic corporate logo out of hock, where it had resided for more than five years. Ford helped secure $18.5 billion in debt in December 2006 by pledging the Blue Oval along with substantially all of its domestic assets, which also included the F-150 and Mustang trademarks — as well as $5 billion of unsecured convertible debt.

"This is a great day for us and is the result of several years of hard work and progress by everyone associated with Ford," Bill Ford, executive chairman, said in a press release. Not to mention the risks that Ford took by recapitalizing in the private market, before the onset of the Great Recession, that rivals General Motors and Chrysler avoided through the federal-taxpayer bailouts in 2009. Ford couldn't get possession of the logo back from its banks until three credit-ratings services had bumped up its ratings, and Moody's was the third.Continue reading...

Ford may still be awaiting better overall credit ratings so it can formally re-take control of its iconic Blue Oval logo. In the meantime, the company is farming out the famous marque to more and more licensees who want to get in on the growing renaissance at America's first surviving car company. For the first time at auto shows this year, Ford has been setting up its own boutique on show floors to sell such Ford-branded merchandise to consumers.

"We've got a whole group merchandising non-autos licensing now," Jim Farley, Ford's global CMO, commented on Monday at a press event discussing the automaker's global "Go Further" campaign.  Consumer and licensee interest in leveraging the brand in this way "is one of the best measures of brand health," he added.

Licensing deals to date, Farley said, include a Mustang-themed pool table (above) and a variety of toys. Ford, naturally, insists on approving actual products and their execution of Ford marks, not just concepts and proposals, so there's an area at corporate HQ set aside for housing and evaluation of all the proposed items. "It's a fun place to go," Farley said.