• by Tanya Gazdik , Yesterday

Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram are partnering for a campaign celebrating America’s 250th anniversary. 

The debut “America Made Us” spot created by GSD&M will run across social media channels to launch the yearlong America250 celebration.

It is the first of several spots connected to the effort that will break over the next year, says Olivier Francois, global CMO of Stellantis Group.

Stellantis is the exclusive automotive partner of America250, the bipartisan organization charged by Congress to lead the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Other sponsors include Coca-Cola Co., Walmart, Meta, BNY and Goldman Sachs.

“It’s a perfect fit,” Francois tells Marketing Daily, adding that both the efforts by the group and the Stellantis campaign aim to bring Americans together. "America inspires everything we do and how we do it. Americans continue to make our brands what they are today.”

After supporting France in the restoration of the Notre Dame cathedral and a campaign that was a tribute to the French, Francois said he started looking for a similar project in the U.S. 

“I saw that we needed to do something in America for our American brands and that it should not be a commercial, it should be something more substantial,” he says. 

Each of the four brands will play a central role in the yearlong America250 celebration, which includes providing a fleet of vehicles that move America250 official events across the country. In addition, the Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram brands will each reveal a limited-edition America250 vehicle within their portfolio to commemorate the yearlong celebration.

The debut spot features the voiceover of Kevin Yon, who was the narrator of “Imported from Detroit,” a 2011 spot featuring Eminem that is widely considered to be the automaker’s comeback anthem.

Yon died in 2018, but Francois says he is still in touch with his widow, who signed off on using AI to generate the voiceover for this spot with the help of ElevenLabs which used existing recordings of Yon’s voice. 

“It's very emotional and very true to who we are because that's where we started,” Francois says.