Jeep ‘River In The City’ Stunt Transports Unsuspecting Drivers To Urban Wilderness Wonderland

To promote the new Jeep Cherokee in a way that enveloped drivers with a true sense of the vehicle’s capabilities, the brand transformed a city street in Vancouver into a wilderness wonderland complete with a million pounds of rocks and sand, a forest of trees, 400,000 pounds of snow, 250,000 gallons of water to make a river and even two mountain wolves.

Unsuspecting test drivers were instructed by the vehicle’s GPS to take a right turn into this “river in the city” to get the full experience.

For those not chosen to experience the stunt and the vehicle firsthand, the brand created a microsite to house all of the campaign’s elements including a commercial which aired on TV, a behind-the-scenes video, a case study video, an interview with one of the participants, a photo gallery of the transformed street, links to take a deeper dive into the vehicle and videos highlighting the vehicle’s safety features.

Here’s the commercial:

Here’s the case study video:

Here’s the behind the scenes video:

Here’s the participant interview video:

The brand also used its social media channels to call attention to the stunt:

Employees and individual dealerships also distributed the meme:

And the microsite is being promoted on Jeep’s brand homepage:

While the stunt is just now being promoted by Jeep, the “River in the City” was constructed back in June from the 14th to the 18th. One wonders how they prevented all that snow from immediately melting.

Of the stunt, Olivier Francois, Chief Marketing Officer of Jeep parent company FCA Global, said:

“We wanted to bring to life the real world capabilities of the Jeep Cherokee in a unique approach. So how do you do that? By taking what is essentially an experiential event where unsuspecting drivers are being filmed navigating a busy metropolitan street that has been turned into a fully functional mountain river and let them experience the capabilities of the Jeep Cherokee for themselves. Our ‘River in the City’ takes an untraditional approach to create a powerful statement that the Jeep Cherokee can handle anything a city throws at it.”

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Steve Hall

Steve Hall is a marketing professional, publisher, writer, community manager, photographer and all-around lover of advertising.