So a while back, W+K Shanghai were asked to create the brand voice for the Jeep Cherokee in the US.
Despite Jeep being the founder of the category, the reality is there are now a whole host of competitors all saying – and showing – almost identical things.
Rather than look into the appeal of emotions like ‘escape’ and ‘discovery’ we decided to look into why those things were so appealing to people and what we found was really interesting.
As we get older, we fight between satisfying our curiosity and fulfilling what is expected of us.
In other words, we fight between satisfying one innate human trait with another.
The reason ‘responsibility’ tends to win is that as we get older and have more responsibilities, we think it’s important to live up to those expectations because we think they are important and we never want to let the people down who matter most to us most.
These are good traits, wonderful traits, important traits … however the cost of this attitude is that, unlike when we were kids, we can’t easily surrender to those moments of curiosity … even if it’s nothing more than seeing what exists down a road you’ve constantly passed, but never been down.
Anyway, the reason I am saying this is that when I was recently in the US, I saw an ad for a Lexus 4×4 and it seemed they were using a similar insight, however in terms of how they expressed it, they went in a totally different direction.
Of course, Lexus and Jeep are entirely different brands and while I am not trying to say one ad is better than the other [though I obviously think one is a hell of a lot better than the other], it’s a good reminder on the importance of brand voice, not to mention how communication works best when it makes you feel something rather than tells you to feel something.
Anyway, this was our Jeep ad …
… and this was the Lexus spot …
I’ll be interested to hear what you think.