Olivier François is a storyteller. We love his stories. A modern-day de Tocqueville, he has come to America to tell us about hard work and sacrifice, about revival, about a new American century. He also tells us to buy Chrysler cars.

François is the Chief Marketing Officer for Fiat, the Italian car company that now owns Chrysler. He and his team created the “Imported from Detroit” (IFD) ad campaign and this year’s “So God Made a Farmer” Dodge Ram commercial. The original 2011 “Born of Fire” IFD spot made a big splash. It won an Effie and Advertising Age’s “Marketer of the Year” award in 2012 and, if we are to believe the hype, it transformed Chrysler’s image from beaten-down, bailed-out failure to iconic American underdog on the verge of greatness. The campaign has been so successful that Chrysler launched an IFD collector’s line. Enthusiasts can purchase IFD track jackets, baby tees, coffee mugs, and Carhartt gear worked up with the new IFD logo (the Joe Louis fist gripping the Chrysler wings).

The story behind the ads is already the stuff of legend. François recalls feeling the stirrings of an idea while watching commercials for vinyl replacement windows and “one-day only” sales events in a Detroit hotel room on his first trip to the city in 2009. Amidst the dreariness of American television, something clicked: “If we could bring back the city that made us, we could take back our rightful place within it, because Detroit, this very place that the public hates so much, is the source of what will save it.”