Attention, Millennials: Jeep Wants You to Quit Your Job and Eat Meat

The only thing missing is Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way bleating from the speakers, but songs from 1977 often don’t play well with those born after 1980. (Or 1982, depending on your source.) Slow, maudlin hipster “rock,” if you can call it that, is how you reel in those youngsters these days.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, knowing exactly what it wants the second-generation Jeep Compass to mean to the most sought-after segment of car buyers, is placing its sales pitch to scruffy Millennials in a new ad campaign.

As Millennial automotive marketing is usually a cringe-inducing affair, each new product launch and ad campaign targeting this generation sparks morbid interest in cynical observers. Hence, this post.

Jeep’s 2017 Compass — no, not that other 2017 Compass — gets top billing in FCA’s new “Recalculating” campaign, but the real star of the show is you, dear Millennial consumer. You, with your hopes and dreams being squashed like a centipede under a bank vault by the expectations of society.

Throughout the ad a robotic, GPS-like voice barks life instructions instead of directions, telling the Compass’ occupants exactly what they should do with themselves. “Go straight to a steady job,” the voice commands. “Toe the company line.”

“Stay single until you’re 34.”

Each individual then changes their mind — telling off their employer, proposing to a girlfriend or tangling with bears with reckless spontaneity as the system, the machine, the MAN states, “Recalculating.” They’re taking the road less traveled, you see, and what do you need for off-roading? A Jeep! Like the Soyuz capsule in Gravity, these young adults, each filled with roiling passions, pent-up desires and the alluring yet petrifying uncertainty of youth, have found their escape vehicle.

Hold on, it doesn’t end there. Olivier Francois, FCA’s chief marketing officer, tells the Detroit Free Press, “[Millennials] want a higher level of human truth, that’s what they want. All you need is your inner compass.” Boom! There it is.

The spot exudes a socially acceptable level of libertarian/punk ethos by showing Hip Young Urban Professionals throwing off the shackles of a pre-determined life to follow their hearts, sometimes in an almost-risque way. “Be a vegan,” says the voice, as one of our protagonists chows down on a steak large enough to choke an elephant. A young woman looks at a pregnancy test with apprehension, at which point she appears to make like Madonna and keep that baby — but what about her career?!

Depending on the viewer, some might see such things as either a reinforcement of traditional societal norms or a backlash to the expectations of the uber politically correct.

Up to this point, it’s bearable. In fact, it’s among the better automotive appeals to Millennials seen in recent years, though the messaging is hardly new. At least the subjects are driving and not running around a parked CUV painting things on walls and pretending to have a camp-out.

Then follows the feel-good, saccharine marketing tagline that wouldn’t sound out of place spoken in a stadium to 12,000 high-schoolers bused in from around the state. The one that eats up a lot of the goodwill felt by the viewer up to that point: “Love, hope, happiness. Whatever your destination, there’s a million beautiful, ever changing ways to get us there.”

Ideally, though, you’ll want to take a Jeep to that destination. That’s right, kiddos, you can choose from three transmissions!