Jeep is promoting a new vehicle, the Commander, with a campaign that's part viral and part branded entertainment. The effort, created by interactive ad agency Organic, went live Thursday at the site
www.WeAreTheMudds.com.
The campaign reflects DaimlerChrysler's larger strategy to increase its online marketing efforts, said Jeff Bell, vice president of the Chrysler and Jeep Group. "We
will continue to push monies towards interactive and experiential marketing for three reasons," Bell told MediaPost's OMMA magazine. "First, it is measurable. Second, it is more engaging
emotionally, and therefore effective. Third, the highest quality of creative and technical talent is working in this area."
For now, the site--which features a family of Jeep-enthusiasts, the
Mudds--is a bit of a tease. It includes brief bios for each of the Mudds--Brock, the father; Tracy, the mother; and their children, Clay, Summer, and Victoria. The site also includes a link to
Victoria's blog--eventually, the other characters will also have blogs.
The other familial blogs will be rolled out in the next two weeks, leading up to the Commander's Oct. 1 debut. In addition
to the teaser site and the blogs, the campaign's centerpiece will be a series of four downloadable videos, which will feature Mudd family vacations.
Each video will reveal coordinates to a
virtual "geo-cache"-- geocaching is a hobby involving trekking to some remote location, burying a "cache" of items, and then posting the GPS coordinates of where that item can be found, so others can
dig it up.
Web site visitors can "dig up" the Mudd's caches by using an application designed with the Google Maps application programming interface. Each time a user digs up a cache, they are
entered in a sweepstakes to win, among other things, a Jeep Commander--a seven-passenger trail-rated vehicle.
Traffic will be driven to the site using a number of online and offline
promotions--promotional material was handed out at Jeep's "Camp Jeep" event, and banner ads at outdoor lifestyle sites like Outside.com, Gorp.com, and Away.com ask users to sign up to receive updates
about the Mudds' travels. However, as of yet, no TV spots are planned featuring the Mudds. "It's really very much an online campaign for the moment," said Chuck Russo, Organic's chief client
development officer.
Colleen DeCourcy, the chief creative officer of Organic, said the Mudds are "online ambassadors" for the vehicle. "They're heroes. They're not people hiding inside of
Hummers. We were really trying to sum that up--it's the first Jeep advertising that deals with people who would live in the jeep as opposed to the vehicle itself."