Jeep Just Made Its Filthiest Ad Ever

It's no fun playing clean, after all

Throw away your Turtle Wax. Retire that squeegee. It’s time to heap mud, leaves and crud all over your SUV instead. Because that’s so in these days. And while you’re at it, jam some twigs under the windshield wipers. Live!

In the Jeep spot below from BETC Paris, owners of various vehicles “stage” their SUVs to make it appear as if they’ve been trekking far and wide on grand adventures. They probably sat at home all weekend and streamed Stranger Things in its entirety. As for Jeep owners, well, perhaps they experienced the great outdoors in all its grimy glory.

It’s set to a version of “The Great Pretender,” a tune popularized by Freddie Mercury in the ’80s.

Directed with zest by Martin Werner through Movie Magic, the :60 does a grand job of connecting Jeep to unbridled fun. The imagery of cars crusted in muck and mire proves playful and a tad apocalyptic. It works because it’s novel and memorable, something unexpected in a category stuffed with shiny sojourns across mountain passes and sun-splashed fjords.

During the shoot “mud became a surprisingly precise science,” BETC creatives Olivier Mille and Morgane Alexandre tell Muse. “We spent a lot of time adjusting the exact amount of dirt on each car—too little and the joke didn’t read, too much and it stopped feeling fake.”

“The irony is that we were doing exactly what the characters do in the film: staging adventure very carefully.”

What’s more, “we had to constantly remind the actors not to sing too well. ‘The Great Pretender’ needed to feel casual, almost offhand, like something you hum when you’re convinced no one is listening. When it sounded too good, it felt dishonest.”

The team chose that track because “‘The Great Pretender’ says everything the film wants to say in a single line. Using that song allowed us to avoid commentary, voiceover or explanation. The song turns the entire film into a gentle wink rather than a statement.”

But, what drove the concept in the first place?

“We were inspired by a very contemporary tension: the gap between how adventurous people want to look and how they actually live,” the creators say. “Adventure has slowly turned into an aesthetic: something you wear, stage or signal, rather than something you do. Jeep has a unique legitimacy here, because it’s one of the few brands that doesn’t need to exaggerate or perform adventure.”

“So, instead of showing Jeep ‘doing more,’ we chose to show everyone else doing a bit too much. The Compass doesn’t prove anything. It simply passes through … and that contrast does all the talking.”

BETC’s excelled at unexpected auto excursions of late. Previous campaigns include this sci-fi epic for Alpine and a reality-warping dreamscape hyping Citroën.