Check out the campaigns which made Ford a world leader in advertising for over a century [video]

As catchy advertising slogans go, Ford breaks many of the rules of the genre, writes Jessica Casey.

When Henry Ford told his salespeople in 1909 that “any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black,” he was demonstrating two of his greatest powers: his grasp of words and his talent for marketing his products.

In fairness, that typically pithy line was never intended as a public slogan — but that kind of punchy and effective sentence has become part of Ford’s DNA ever since.