How an eight-year-old ad came to the rescue of Jeep

Repurposing a classic ad from eight years ago helped transform perceptions and start to turn around a slide in sales for the Jeep auto brand in Australia.

Jeep had gone from selling 35,000 cars a year in 2014 to shifting just over 5,000 five year later. A new executive team identified after-sales care as a big part of the problem and set about addressing it with a strategy that included a new brand platform and a major marketing campaign based around the emotional relationship owners have with their vehicles.

What Jeep did

• The brand revised the pricing of spare parts and vehicle servicing, and increased customer support (including lifetime roadside assist).
• Jeep revisited its 2012 ‘I bought a Jeep’ campaign, bringing back the original actors to acknowledge mistakes made in the interim, and explain how these were being fixed. 
• It introduced the Working Far From Home (WFFH) promotional experiential activation, which offered Australians the chance to work from a remote part of Tasmania - accessible only by 4x4 vehicles - attracting 4,000 video entries.
• A new brand campaign captured the “Jeep wave” that drivers exchange and ties in to the brand’s “you’re one of us” sentiment, reaffirming it’s revamped efforts to support its customers.

Results

• Despite the pandemic, Jeep sold more cars in 2020 than 2019, and sales were up 49% in 2021 compared to an industry average of 26%.
• Brand reputation, trust scores, and likelihood to recommend scores all improved.
• The brand spent 18% less in media in 2021 but, thanks to the ‘wave’ campaign, saw a 23% increase in orders and 10% more enquiries.

Key quote 

“We didn’t have to start from zero. We used the awesome assets that people remembered, changed direction by admitting we sometimes got it wrong and were fixing it. That ad helped turn the business around in literally six months” – Tom Noble, director, marketing and communications at Fiat Chrysler Australia, speaking to The Australian. 

Sourced from The Australian [Image: Jeep]