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Jeep Renegade Drives Surfboard Donations to Ilhabela
Jeep's "Renegades Surfboards" is a 2019 Brazilian film campaign created by SunsetDDB in São Paulo, in which actor Juliano Cazarré recovers and refurbishes abandoned surfboards, loads them into a 2019 Jeep Renegade, and drives from São Paulo to Castelhanos Bay on Ilha Bela to donate them to local children supported by Associação Castelhanos Vive.
Published in Brazil in January 2019, the campaign centres on a single media asset — a film — that uses a journey narrative to communicate the Renegade's off-road capability while anchoring the vehicle in a socially purposeful context. The choice of Castelhanos is deliberate. Castelhanos Bay on Ilha Bela is one of Brazil's most celebrated surf breaks, accessible only via a demanding dirt track that cuts through the Atlantic Forest. Reaching it requires exactly the kind of vehicle the campaign is selling, meaning the product demonstration and the humanitarian gesture arrive at the same destination simultaneously.
The campaign was created under the direction of creative director João Lovise and art director Barbara Bono, with SunsetDDB — the São Paulo arm of the DDB global network — leading production. It sits within Jeep's broader strategy of connecting the Renegade to Brazilian terrain, Brazilian culture, and Brazilian adventure, as reported by adsoftheworld.com. In Brazil, where the Jeep Renegade has consistently represented the brand's most accessible entry point into the SUV segment, "Renegades Surfboards" attempts to move beyond rational product communication toward a values-driven narrative that pairs capability with community. Clapboard.com assigns the campaign a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100, reflecting a competent execution with a clear emotional through-line that stops short of category-defining creative ambition.
The Jeep Renegade occupies a distinct position in the Brazilian automotive market as the brand's most attainable SUV. In Brazil, the compact SUV segment is among the most fiercely contested in the country, with competitors including Volkswagen T-Cross and Hyundai Creta consistently challenging Jeep for consideration among urban and peri-urban buyers who also aspire to adventure driving. It is within this context that "Renegades Surfboards" makes its strategic argument: that the Renegade is not merely a city-friendly crossover but a vehicle capable of completing a journey that most cars cannot.
The campaign draws on a consumer insight specific to Brazil — that coastal adventure, surf culture, and natural landscape carry deep aspirational weight among the Renegade's target demographic. Castelhanos, reachable only by off-road track on Ilha Bela, functions as proof-of-concept. The road to it is the product demonstration. By embedding a social cause — the donation of surfboards to children through Associação Castelhanos Vive — the campaign layers community relevance onto capability credentials, a combination that has become increasingly important in Brazilian advertising as purpose-driven storytelling has grown more prevalent across the market.
Globally, Jeep sold approximately 1.48 million vehicles in 2019, down from the prior year, according to FCA's reported figures. SUVs and pickups represented roughly 60% of FCA's global sales that year, per the same source, underscoring how central the SUV portfolio — and the Renegade within it — was to the group's commercial health. In this environment, campaigns that reinforce emotional differentiation alongside product capability serve a clear strategic function, particularly in a market as brand-competitive as Brazil.
Creative director João Lovise and art director Barbara Bono built "Renegades Surfboards" around a journey structure that is as old as film itself but remains effective precisely because it mirrors the vehicle's own logic: departure, obstacle, arrival, reward. The film opens in São Paulo, where Juliano Cazarré — a Brazilian actor with strong national recognition — sources and refurbishes discarded surfboards. The act of restoration before the drive serves a double function, establishing both the physical condition of the boards and the character of the protagonist as someone who sees value where others have abandoned it, an attribute the campaign implicitly transfers to the Renegade itself.
The production moves through Brazil's landscape with deliberate attention to terrain. The approach to Castelhanos on Ilha Bela — a dirt road through dense Atlantic Forest that descends steeply toward the bay — gives the film its visual and dramatic centre. The Renegade navigates it without ceremony, which is precisely the point. Off-road capability demonstrated through necessity rather than spectacle reads as more credible than staged obstacle courses, and SunsetDDB leans into this restraint throughout the film's second act, as documented by adsoftheworld.com.
The arrival at Castelhanos, where local children receive the donated boards through Associação Castelhanos Vive, closes the narrative with an emotional resolution that connects vehicle, protagonist, destination, and community in a single sequence. The choice to use a real non-profit organisation and a real, named location — rather than a generic beach or fictional charity — gives the film a documentary weight that supports its authenticity positioning. The single-asset format, as noted by clapboard.com, concentrates the campaign's impact into one sustained narrative rather than fragmenting it across formats.
No verified performance data for "Renegades Surfboards" is publicly available. No awards for this campaign are documented at Cannes Lions, the Effies, The One Show, D&AD, the Clio Awards, the Webby Awards, or the WARC Awards, according to clapboard.com. Commercially reported results — including brand lift, sales attribution, or reach figures — have not been published by Jeep, FCA, or SunsetDDB in any source indexed at the time of writing.
What the structure of the film does achieve is legible even without metrics. The campaign resolves the central creative challenge of compact SUV advertising in Brazil — proving genuine off-road relevance to buyers who may never leave the city — by making the off-road credential necessary to the delivery of a good outcome for real people. The Renegade is not shown conquering terrain for the thrill of it; it is shown making something possible that would otherwise be impossible. That shift from spectacle to utility-with-purpose is a meaningful creative decision, and it explains the campaign's moderate Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100, as assessed by clapboard.com. The score reflects a campaign that executes its intent cleanly and credibly but does not extend the Jeep or DDB creative legacy in a direction that would register as a breakthrough contribution to the category. The absence of awards recognition aligns with that reading: competent, purposeful, and well-crafted, without the kind of conceptual originality that draws industry attention.
Jeep's "Renegades Surfboards" is a 2019 Brazilian film campaign by SunsetDDB. Actor Juliano Cazarré restores abandoned surfboards, drives them in a 2019 Jeep Renegade from São Paulo to Castelhanos Bay on Ilha Bela, and donates them to children through Associação Castelhanos Vive, according to clapboard.com and adsoftheworld.com.
SunsetDDB created the campaign. SunsetDDB is the São Paulo arm of the DDB global network and served as the lead agency on the project, with creative director João Lovise and art director Barbara Bono named in the campaign credits, as documented by adsoftheworld.com.
Castelhanos Bay on Ilha Bela is accessible only via an off-road track through Atlantic Forest. Jeep selected the location because reaching it requires genuine off-road capability, making the route itself a product demonstration embedded naturally within the campaign's humanitarian narrative, as reported by clapboard.com.
João Lovise served as creative director and Barbara Bono as art director on the campaign. Both worked at SunsetDDB in São Paulo. Actor Juliano Cazarré appeared on screen as the protagonist, according to campaign records documented by adsoftheworld.com and clapboard.com.
No awards are documented for this campaign. According to clapboard.com, no recognition has been recorded at Cannes Lions, the Effies, The One Show, D&AD, the Clio Awards, the Webby Awards, or the WARC Awards. The campaign received a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100.
A Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 indicates a competent and purposeful campaign that executes its creative intent clearly. According to clapboard.com, the score reflects solid craft and a credible narrative without the conceptual originality required to rank among the most distinguished work in the automotive category.
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