Data went on to be an IT support manager

Jeep hijacks your childhood memories to create the most cringeful online automotive campaign this year...

Return to Astoria

Loosely basing a concept on the Goonie's movie, they create an online advergame that is truly delightful to despise. It is so bad and poorly done that I'm sure it's already become a Friday night cult phenomenon. I would provide you pictures but I decided I didn't want to stain this blog with such malodorous content, lest it invade like a Seinfeldian valet.

In case you start to think I'm just full of criticism without any substance, here's why it's so awful and what you (if you're an auto advertiser) can learn from it:

• It's 2007, can you animate flash faster than a crawl?
• I understand the rationale of branding with the Goonies, since your target market were inspired viewers back then, but a Goonies adventure is, by nature, vehicle-less. The bad guys (you know the adults) drove the cars.
• Why an advergame? What about this demographic made you think they'd want to engage in your brand through a casual game? Did they skew female (most casual gamers are female)? Did focus grouping reveal them to be especially enticed by your SUVs if they virtually drove them?
• Why a crappy advergame? The game is fugly, gives absolutely no chance of success within a reasonable amount of time, and brings no value to the Jeep or Goonies brand. What the hell were you thinking? Whatever you paid, you paid too much. Fire the agency that made this for you, trust me, if they allowed you to put this out to the world, they're not working in your best interest.

Jeep hasn't been all bad. Here's a campaign for the Compass last year that I really liked. It allows you to create an avatar, sing karaoke and send it all to a friend. A decently fun waste of time.