I only watch one football game a year semi-willingly, the Super Bowl, and I only watch it for three reasons:
- Two teams that have fought like hell to get to the final game are going to kick the utter hell out of each other. It’s a worthy game to watch.
- The halftime shows used to be entertaining…at least, up until 2004, when we got a true taste of what “Deflategate” should be referring to, then proceeded to get a lesson in classic rock music for the next few years…
- The commercials.
Out of those three items, the commercials are the biggest draw. The Super Bowl has a strong viewing audience (Over 110 million in 2014 alone), so putting your best foot forward when a good third of the nation is watching is worth the investment of the money it takes to purchase the airtime. This year, the ads seemed to lack the overall punch or humor that the Super Bowl commercials have been known for. FCA ran three ads this year. One is “Wisdom”, and you’ve seen it before: centenarians giving life advice shortly followed by a Challenger turning rubber into smoke, and Fiat’s “Little Blue Pill” commercial, where an unlucky Italian gentleman’s little helper pill gets flung out the window and into the village, winding up in the tank of a Fiat 500, which swells up to the 500X. Then there was the ad for the Jeep Renegade, dubbed “Beautiful Lands”.
I have no problem with the theme or the song, which is Marc Scibilia’s take on “This Land Is Your Land”. In fact, the overall theme of the ad is great and the footage is beautiful. I don’t mind that the Renegade was shown in locations all over the world driving around. That doesn’t bother me either, since FCA was up front that the new Jeep was going to be a world-market vehicle. Here’s what bothered me:
Let’s start with parent company FCA, the recently merged Fiat and Chrysler. They’re headquartered in London, England, and sell the cars the world over, so if you want to be picky, you’re getting an English CUV made by a mongrel group of Italians and Americans. Except that isn’t right either, since FCA is based in The Netherlands…that’s right, it’s Dutch! That doesn’t satisfy you? Ok, let’s look at where the Renegade is manufactured: Melfi, Italy and Goiana, Brazil. That doesn’t help matters, does it?
The premise of the “Beautiful Lands” advertisement is that the Jeep is for a world audience, and the manufacture of the Renegade reflect the globalized method in which this vehicle was created. What bothers me about this advertisement is the claim that the Renegade is an American SUV. It simply isn’t. It wasn’t in development before the merger, or even before Fiat’s acquisition of Chrysler. It is underpinned by the same platform the Fiat 500X is on, which is a highly modified version of what is underneath the Dodge Dart…which traces it’s origins to the Alfa Romeo Giulietta.
FCA, you’re a global brand. Stop using “American” as a selling point. You manufacture vehicles all over the world. If the vehicle is made in America, like the Viper, Grand Cherokee and a good portion of Ram trucks are, then you can make the American claim. Everything else is simply imported, including this Jeep.
Just more Barbie-Jeep crap to end up high centered in a mall parking lot.
They’ve gotten it down to a cynical formula: 7 bars= Jeep.
What do you want to Jeepify?
Small hatch? Done.
Ram pickup? It’s been done.
Chrysler Pacifica? Give them ten minutes.
Or did they just mean it’s the smallest and lightest SUV [i]sold[/i] in America? If so, not quite as big a blunder as Nissan using “Cat’s in the Cradle” as a background song and inviting you to speculate on what happens to the race car driver and his son later.
But! 90% of consumers are totally ignorant to the “What”, “Why”, “Where”, “Who’s” of auto manufacturing.
And “Italy’s Smallest, Lightest SUV” ain’t gonna move metal in America.
The Jeep brand was, for them, a cherry to be picked.
Although Fiat and Chrysler merged chrysler is still chrysler which is based out of Detroit. Jeep is more a part of Chrysler than Fiat. Yes we share ideas and parts with Fiat but as a chrysler employee I can tell you that we are still very much our own company. We consider ourselves to be domestic and are proud to be domestic even though our cars are sometimes built in other countries….as are many other auto company’s cars. That’s the globalized world we live in!