Badvert of the Month: Jeep
Image: FCA Sweden, Jeep.se (the picture is cropped). Note: “Ekologisk” translates as both “ecological” and “organic” in Swedish.
The article was first published on New Weather Sweden.
On April 30, New Weather Sweden files a complaint against car manufacturer Jeep’s ad for the SUV Compass to the Swedish Consumer Agency and the Swedish Advertising Ombudsman (the Swedish advertising regulator).
The advertisement could be found on the car company's website in the winter and spring of 2021. We considered it to be grossly misleading.
“The car in the advertisement, a Compass 4XE, is an SUV that is partly or mainly powered by petrol at average driving. Despite this, the ad's headline is 'Ecological Mobility'. The body of text does not provide any information on how the car is ‘ecological’ or that the car is primarily or partly powered by fossil fuels. It also does not contain any information on carbon dioxide emissions. The average consumer gets the impression that it is a very environmentally friendly car, probably a car with zero emissions.”
The Advertising Ombudsman decided to review the advertisement and requested an explanation from the advertiser, FCA Sweden, the Swedish branch of the car group Fiat Chrysler Automobile. In addition to Jeep, the company imports and sells Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Chrysler, Dodge, Lancia and Maserati, among others.
In its response, the FCA stated that the wording in the title was an error that had occurred "in the automated translation process initiated by the advertiser's headquarters."
It is not clear which foreign word had been incorrectly translated into ecological. The FCA also does not explain what should have been written instead or why no one at the company had discovered the error even though the ad had been on the website for a long time.
On May 31, the Advertising Ombudsman agreed with our view. Our complaint was upheld with the following explanation: “The Advertising Ombudsman finds that the advertisement contains a misleading environmental statement. It is therefore contrary to Articles 5 and D1 of the International Chamber of Commerce Advertising and Marketing Communications Code.
The Advertising Ombudsman further states that “an average consumer probably perceives the statement ‘Ecological mobility’, in the current context, as the marketed car model being environmentally friendly. The advertisement therefore contains a misleading environmental statement and thus contravenes Article 5 and D1 of the ICC Code. According to Article 24 of the ICC Code, a subsequent correction is in itself desirable if the marketing communication violates the rules, but it does not make the infringement justifiable.”
Image: FCA Sweden, Jeep.se (the picture is cropped).
FCA has now changed the headline on the website to “A new era of mobility”.
The car manufacturers' marketing of plug-in hybrids is sometimes horrendous in their attempts to make these fake electric cars appear as electric cars. We are led to believe that a plug-in hybrid is an electric car and that all "rechargeable" cars have very low emissions of greenhouse gases. On the Jeep website, the company suggests in both pictures and texts that Compass is an electric car. In the Q&A you can, for example, find the following:
“Which kind of electric car will Jeep Renegade and Compass 4xe be?
Jeep Renegade and Compass 4xe will be Pug-In Hybrid Electric 4x4 Vehicles, equipped with a petrol engine that drives the front wheels, and an electric motor that drives the rear wheels and improves off-road capability”
More complaints to the advertising regulator are bound to be pending.
According to official information, Compass emits 49–55 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre and the state subsidizes the car through a bonus of SEK 12,935–16,433 (approx. £1,081-1,373). How much carbon dioxide the car emits during actual driving is unknown, but several reports show that other plug-in hybrids emit two to four times more in reality than in the official figures. If these figures were to be used, the buyer would instead pay up to SEK 16,000 (approx. £1,337) higher tax.