Key to the campaign is a series of live television spots featuring a talky, scattered comedienne, Annabelle Gurwitch, who will show potential buyers just how fabulous Ford's new car is as she travels around the country in it and is filmed doing so.

Gurwitch, for example, will show how she transforms the map holder on her car door into a shoe tree.

The commercials will air live (with a seven-second bleep delay) from different locations, mostly in California. The first spots will be seen during the MTV music awards on September 9 and will continue through March on major US networks. The first three spots will show Gurwitch getting lost in Manhattan as she drives her Ford Focus to the MTV awards. (Prince William already drove the Focus inBritain for his driving test. He passed.)

Gurwitch "kind of goes with her car," said Bruce Rooke, executive creative director in the Detroit office of WPP Group's J. Walter Thompson, which was behind the campaign along with New York-based UniWorld Group and Miami-based Zumi Advertising.

Ford wouldn't disclose the amount it plans to spend on the campaign, which will include radio spots and outdoor advertising. Ford spend $1.15 billion on advertising in 1998 and $540 million from January through July this year, according to Competitive Media Reporting.

Ford hopes that by living on the edge with its live commercials it will reach the millions of car buyers in their teens, 20s and 30s who grew up on extreme sports such as in-line skating and sky surfing rather than the more traditional American football and baseball.

With this kind of advertising, "We're overcoming a little bit of an attitude that we don't have cool cars," said Jan Klug, Ford's marketing communications manager.

Ford's Focus is itsbiggest foray into the demographic of the so-called Echo Boomers (children of the baby boomers) and Gen Xers. Ford has priced the car at $12,280; it climbs to about $16,000 depending on the extras such as a sports rack or an unconventional, removable pet holder with a foldable dish meant to keep Fido from sliding around on the seat. Buyers also have their choice of flowers or swirls on the outside, and fleece, jersey or neoprene for the seats.

And, Ford has mimicked the cool Volkswagen Beetle: Buyers can attach a picture frame to the dashboard as opposed to the flower vase in a Bug.

Ford will also be running radio spots, with a hip-hop feel, and plastering advertisements on billboards, buses and construction sites, to push its new compact. Additionally, Ford is giving away about 120 cars to Gen Xers and Yers handpicked by the company in Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, New York, Atlanta and San Francisco.

Rooke said the commercials aren't a gimmick but rather an approach that mirrors the personalities ofits young market. "They live their lives very different from the baby boomers. It's a very fluid, circuitous look at life," he said.

The Asian Wall Street Journal