Overt advertising is probably about as effective as those Gordon Pape reverse mortgage commercials when it comes to reaching cynical 18-to-24 males.

That’s why Jeep decided to position itself as the ‘insider brand’ in a new ad promoting its sponsorship of the Exclaim concert series.

Created by the Windsor-based brand’s AOR PentaMark Worldwide (a division of BBDO), the creative features a Jeep TJ against a backdrop of guitar picks arranged to look like mountains, which fits the iconic visual landscape used in typical brand advertising for Jeep.

In this case, the ‘mountains’ aren’t immediately recognizable, but that’s a good thing according to account supervisor Andrea Ong Novak. ‘If you aren’t in the music scene, you wouldn’t know that they are guitar picks, so it’s a bit of an insider thing,’ she says, adding that the consumer target also appreciates intelligent advertising. ‘It’s a great opportunity to speak to them on their own terms.’

The ultimate objective, she says, is to encourage young males to consider the TJ, which is smaller and has less storage capacity than the original Jeep brand. ‘This is a young person’s car and the position has always been that it offers four-by-four capability with a sense of fun. The [idea] is if you drive a Jeep, the world is your playground.’

But it’s also an attempt to solidify Jeep’s sponsorship of the concert series in the minds of the consumer, as opposed to just throwing up a couple of banners on-site and hoping the message gets across.

Media includes outdoor advertising, which launched in Victoria in early March and will continue on to Montreal, the travelling event’s final destination, in mid-April. The ad is also running in urban weeklies like The Georgia Strait, Now and Eye.

The concert series, which typically draws about 10,000 consumers from beginning to end, was organized by Exclaim, a national monthly music magazine with a circulation of 100,000. The readership is active and university educated, with a 65% male skew. ‘It’s definitely an audience that questions authority,’ says Exclaim publisher Ian Danzig.

Client: DaimlerChrsyler Canada

Agency: PentaMark Worldwide

Copywriter: James Ansley

Art Director: John Terry

Senior Media Strategist: Kevin Paterson

Account Supervisor: Andrea Ong Novak

Account Director: Marty Hetherington

Production Manager: Frank Ninno