“Those Jeep Ads Make My Skin Crawl… It’s Just So Awful”

“Those Jeep Ads Make My Skin Crawl… It’s Just So Awful”
John Bastick
By John Bastick



Former head of CBA’s marketing, Andy Lark, has revealed his most hated ad ever – the Jeep commercials by Cummins&Partners.

In a wide ranging interview with B&T, Lark, who is now CMO at the cloud-based accounting software company Xero, also predicted that the traditional TV model as we know will be dead in a mere two years’ time.

However, he saved some particular venom for the Jeep TVCs and its creators.

“I think the work that Cummins&Ross did for Jeep; it drives me nuts, it makes my skin crawl, it’s just so awful,” he said.

However, Lark quickly added that he agreed the ads had been a success. “It’s effective, it works, and it’s clever,” he conceded. “It’s really smart and is clearly working.”

According to official figures from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries Jeep sales were up 37.2 per cent year on year in Australia in 2014.

Lark believed there were two things you had to achieve in a successful advertising campaign. “One, it’s got to be remembered,” he said. “And two, it has to inspire people to do something and it’s made me reconsider the (Jeep) brand, that’s for sure.”

And his favourite ad? Lark said he was a big fan of Air New Zealand’s campaigns which he called “always exceptional”. He said the Kiwi flyer did “consistently clever, smart, integrated work. They do really nice stuff.”

Lark also had some advice for agencies themselves. “I think we’re at the end of the race to the bottom and media agencies need to reinvent themselves. The smart clients will figure out that media strategy is never going to be more important, and I think that will be an enormous opportunity for everybody,” he added.




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