[Auto] Jeep Bets On Springsteen As Its Messenger In Appeal For Unity

[Ale X Erfan]

Jeep’s Super Bowl commercial starring Bruce Springsteen is a groundbreaking achievement for advertising because “The Boss” just doesn’t do commercials. But the two-minute appeal for national unity that is running during the second half of the Big Game in Tampa, and already has been released via social media, also created a potentially huge moment in the political debate that has deeply riven the American po[CENSORED]ce these days.

With “The Middle,” the new commercial that ends, “To the ReUnited States of America,” Fiat Chrysler arguably became the most prominent company specifically calling for a coming together of a sharply divided U.S. body politic. Unlike the many other big corporations that have rallied loudly behind progressive interpretations of what’s wrong with the country, the automaker — now part of the transatlantic giant Stellantis — blew past me-tooism to make a significant plea for the only thing that ultimately will keep America going.

And the opportunity to call for such reunification was the exact moment that drew Springsteen into a Super Bowl ad. The spot was shot in Lebanon, Kansas, in the precise geographic center of America. There’s absolutely no subtlety involved in the poetic plea shaped by The Boss, and delivered to his fans and everyone else, to put aside today’s intense political and ideological differences in an effort to keep the great American experiment on the rails.

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In the sparsely shot Super Bowl ad that focuses almost entirely on images of Springsteen spending a winter’s day in the Great Plains — with hardly an actual Jeep in sight — he asks Americans to “come meet here in the middle” ideologically and “to remember the very soil we stand on is common ground.”

“All are more than welcome to come meet here in the middle,” Springsteen intones over predictably placid backdrops in the heartland. “It’s no secret: The middle has been a hard place to get to lately, between red and blue, between servant and citizen, between our freedom and our fear.

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“Now, fear has never been the best of who we are. And as for freedom, it’s not just the property of the fortunate few: It belongs to us all.” A flag waves on a front porch. “Whoever you are, wherever you’re from. It’s what connects us. We need that connection. We need the middle.”

Yet unlike past Super Bowl commercials by Fiat Chrysler that have helped shape cultural, social and even political conversation in this country going back a decade, betting on Springsteen as a unifying voice carried some significant risks for the company and for its marketing maestro, Olivier Francois. Clearly, the message of “The Middle” promises nothing but upside for Jeep and the company. But is it possible that Springsteen is the wrong messenger?

For Springsteen broke character during Donald Trump’s presidency to criticize harshly the man whom the American people elected in 2016 and whom nearly half of the adult po[CENSORED]ce voted to re-elect in 2020. “I believe that our current president is a threat to our democracy,” Springsteen said of Trump last fall, joining a loud chorus of entertainment, cultural and sports celebrities whose condemnation of Trump echoed for more than four years. He also narrated some campaign materials for Joe Biden.

And Springsteen didn’t let up, talking with millions of listeners on his Sirius XM channel instead of the hundreds of thousands who would have attended his concerts last year. At one point he urged President Trump, “Wear a f——— mask.”

So if watchers of Super Bowl LV leaned conservative as NFL fans generally do, or even if they reflected a perfectly half-and-half America, many viewers might have a hard time swallowing a plea for unity from the partisan that Springsteen has revealed lately.

But Francois largely dismissed such concerns. “He is the closest thing to a unifier,” Stellantis’s chief marketing officer insisted, noting the broad appeal of Springsteen’s music and persona over decades. “You couldn’t think of a better name, because I’ve been thinking about that a lot,” Francois told me. “The politics of Bruce Springsteen are exactly a reflection of America. If you go to one of his concerts, there’s proof that he’s not polarizing.”

To Francois’s point, the 71-year-old Springsteen still ranks as one of the most po[CENSORED]r singer-songwriters in America, his esteem highest among his contemporary generation but even very high among millennials. And he exercises broad appeal demographically in other ways, as illustrated by the 2012 po[CENSORED]r song, “Springsteen,” by country star Eric Church.

“Are there going to be some Trump diehards?” Francois said. “America is so divided that everything is seen as a symbol. [Springsteen] is so widely po[CENSORED]r. You may recall that Clint Eastwood was a Republican,” Francois said, noting a Jeep ad called “Halftime in America” that ran in 2012 featuring Eastwood’s appeal to keep the national chin up in the wake of the Great Recession. “It was the same kind of message, and he didn’t create a backlash.”

Yet national division is a bigger problem today than at any time in the recent past; disunity arguably poses a larger threat to the future of America than even the stumbles of the economy created by the pandemic and governments’ responses. That’s why “literally, the intent of this ad was to deliver a healing message,” Francois said. “Together, all of us wanted to do literally a prayer.

“I think we ended up with the most spiritual commercial in the game — maybe even in [Super Bowl] history.” And, indeed religious — specifically Christian — symbolism extends throughout “The Middle,” including scenes inside the chapel that sits on the geographic centerpoint of the Lower 48, as well as crosses perched outside of it. Near the end of the ad, Springsteen lights a votive candle.

Sage for the age is a role that Springsteen has embraced, and that his fans have granted, since he took the baby-boomer generation by storm in the early 1970s, riding albums such as Born to Run and Born in the U.S.A., as well as his lively concerts, to iconic status as a performer. He was a kid from New Jersey who went on to hail the American working class and build a reputation for authenticity in the profession, which also gave him some credibility as a sometime social critic.

Meanwhile, over the last several years, Francois’s advertisements for Fiat Chrysler brands also were building toward this moment. He started with “Born of Fire,” the iconic two-minute commercial for the Chrysler brand, in 2011, a rallying cry for the entire company and the city of Detroit as both were trying to come back from the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009. The Eastwood ad followed in 2012, addressing not political divisions as much as economic disappointment. Bob Dylan, a generational voice even before Springsteen, weighed in via a later commercial, as did the posthumous voice of Paul Harvey celebrating “The Farmer.”

Social media will give Stellantis and Springsteen an early reading on the effectiveness of their unification bet, and surely Ad Meter and other instant analyses of the effectiveness of Super Bowl ads will render a verdict. But it may be a while before we can tell if Springsteen’s prayer will be answered.