Oops! Have you tried maneuvers like this? #Jeep
One great thing about PR and marketing is that you can often turn a massive fail into a great win — like when a Slovak PR agency for Mercedes-Benz posted a picture of the new CLA Shooting Brake next to a pool.
A random commenter said he’d like them to take the Merc for a swim. Mercedes’ PR agency replied, “If your post gets more than 1,000 likes, you can choose whether we reverse or powerslide the car into the pool.”
Naturally, the post got nearly 2,000 likes within hours. Mercedes responded with a nicely done video of CLA Shooting Brake getting drowned by a Black Stig, promising they would hire their social media manager back if more than 1,000 people shared the video. In the end, Mercedes drew a great deal attention to their new rakish wagon and lost nothing.
Unfortunately for Jeep Czech Republic, sometimes a fail is just a fail — like a few days ago when the official Czech importer of Jeep posted the photo you see above of a Grand Cherokee getting up on two wheels.
In itself, the picture would not inspire much trust in the Jeep’s handling. With American cars being frowned upon in Europe because of their supposed lousy handling, the photo would be enough of a fail on its own. To add insult to injury, the photo comes from the infamous 2012 “Moose Test” where the Grand Cherokee almost rolled over. After Jeep upgraded the model, it passed flawlessly.
After my colleague Jiří Červenka shared the post with stinging commentary (“Social media marketing level: Change the PR agency. Jeep shares a photo from infamous Moose test which brought international shame and necessitated vehicle modifications”) and got written about in Czech media magazines, the post was deleted.
No word on the perpetrator’s job situation, but we assume his position is about as stable as that Grand Cherokee.
[Source: Jiří Červenka]
That Slovakian video of the CLA being driven into the water looks… less than believable. What’s with the 15 cuts in the last 5 seconds where it allegedly is driven into the water?
By reading some of the poorly translated comments on FB, it doesn’t seem like the video fooled the locals either.
Yeah, there’s definitely some fakery going on.
The fakery is calling that car a ‘shooting brake’, which is a vehicle with fewer than 4 doors. It’s a compact wagon/estate car/variant.
When TopGear drowned their black Stig, no one believed that they really killed some racer guy either ;)
No, but Top Gear actually put a car in the drink. I don’t think Mercedes did here.
Of course. I was just talking about the “realism” here.
Yep. I think they threw a plastic cut-out in the water or something.
Doesn’t anyone remember the under-inflated tire failures of the Ford Explorer rollovers? And it wasn’t restricted to Explorers. Many other small SUV’s were experiencing rollovers.
I’m no expert but the depicted tires are not inflated properly.
Journalist or not, it’s the driver’s responsibility to make sure the vehicle is roadworthy. more so since it’s not your vehicle.
Unless, of course, you are staging an event like this.
Instead of making stuff up why not read about the original test using the handy link in the article ? “Teknikens Värld says the moose test was “conducted with the correct tire pressure for maximum load according to the recommendations provided by Jeep/Chrysler via a sticker on the car’s B-pillar.””
That is what tires look like during a double lane change maneuver which journalists call a moose test. Sometimes the tires debead, which is a bad thing.
I read that. Don’t believe it but I read it.
Jeep’s recommended rear on a 2012 Grand Cherokee 33PSI. I don’t believe for a minute that they were inflated that way. I see no curbs and no potholes. Nothing to explain a “debeading” event.
Call me a sceptic. Personally I think they screwed up.
You realize that if the car puts too much load on the tires in a lateral movement like that it can easily debead the tires even without an obstacle involved, right?
Check out the tire close-up in this review from Jack:
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/10/track-tested-2012-volvo-s60-t5/
Not staged. Jeep acknowledged the problem, and updated their ABS system.
First glance at the profile pic looks like the Jeep name with the AMC logo.
a moose once bit my sister
No realli! She was Karving her initials on the møøse with the sharpened end of an interspace tøøthbrush given her by Svenge – her brother-in-law – an Oslo dentist and star of many Norwegian møvies: “The Høt Hands of an Oslo Dentist”, “Fillings of Passion”, “The Huge Mølars of Horst Nordfink”…
“promising they would hire their social media manager back if more than 1,000 people shared the video.”
Happily, it only has 866 shares to date.
After he was fired, he probably moved from Bratislava to Prague and got hired at Jeep.