Responses by Tuki Ghiassi, executive creative director, Publicis Groupe Middle East.
Background: Jeep is really proud of its community. Few brands have a thriving consumer base that actively seeks each other out and meets up to celebrate what they have in common. It is extremely important for us as brand custodians to acknowledge the Jeep community—we wanted to show them that they’re special to us.
Design thinking: The Middle East Jeep community is among the strongest Jeep communities in the world. They live and breathe our brand values of adventure and discovery and instantly recognize our brand. They are explorers who choose the road less traveled. We wanted to talk to them in a unique, authentic way only they would understand.
Meanwhile, we discovered a unique language hidden in the Jeep grille—not just any language, but one very true to Jeep. Morse code is used to communicate where only a Jeep can take you. And as a concept, we imagined a campaign where every single element—copy, dot, dash, art, imagery, product, details or logo—all shared one singular purpose: to ignite discovery.
Challenges: Maintaining simplicity in the execution was, in fact, the most challenging part of the project. We found the creative territory to be rich, so we explored a multitude of directions. Every detail was continuously questioned and considered. I can’t tell you how often we debated whether we should put an explanatory copy line on the visuals. But it turns out that showing throughout the process was key to maintaining the integrity of the idea and acknowledging that our audience has a desire to discover the answers for themselves.
We weren’t concerned about reaching people who don’t chase answers because they weren’t our target audience for this campaign. But we did launch a microsite so that when people searched online for answers, they were led here. This site lets visitors instantly translate messages between Morse code and English and create their own coded images. It’s a hidden but integral part of the campaign.
Favorite details: The art direction is the pièce de résistance of this campaign. The landscapes, the simple integration of the vehicle in the environment, the powerful yet unobtrusive nature of the Jeep Morse code messages, the fact that we had no traditional call-to-action—everything came together beautifully to visually communicate the essence of our idea, which was to break away from it all and explore freely.
New lessons: We learned a lot about our Jeep community and their mindset. We always knew they loved adventure, but this campaign really put that theory to the ultimate test. We set out to create a campaign that would only appeal to Jeep explorers, and that’s exactly what happened. The Jeep clubs in the Middle East have their own communication forums, and we’ve received messages that they exchange messages in Morse code now. We also see fans on social media have started doing the same. Hilariously, there’s a lot of back translation that happens at our office the moment a comment in Morse code pops up. Jeep owners are now also creating T-shirts using the Jeep Morse code font. It’s great to see them adopting this new visual language and making it a part of their traditions.
Visual influences: We selected the campaign’s imagery based on the science of awe. Research has shown that grandiose natural structures or even images of nature can have powerful physiological and psychological effects on us. Experts say that experiences of awe shift our attention away from ourselves and make us feel like we’re part of something greater. That set the criteria for the images we were looking for. We looked for places that made us say “Wow” and want to travel there just by looking at them.
Time constraints: We very humbly imagined our campaign would run locally only, so we planned to do a local shoot to capture the desert and mountains of the Middle East. However, our client started showing interest in the campaign on a larger scale, and we added executions for Europe, South America, Asia and Africa. There was simply no time to plan a shoot across multiple countries in vastly different markets, so we opted to use existing footage. We reviewed a multitude of photographers’ portfolios and shortlisted hundreds of images before settling on the seven expressions we have now. After finalizing our art direction and look and feel, we found the perfect retoucher who enhanced the base images, reimagining the sky and light, and added vehicles to create the magical images we have today. A big kudos to the team for their attention to detail.
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