ARCHIVEAstronauts - Mitsubishi | Clapboard Ad Archive
Mitsubishi’s Astronauts campaign, developed by Bowie Perú for the Peruvian automotive market in...
Jeep Brazil Bets on Childhood Instinct to Sell the 2019 Renegade
Jeep's 'Your Instinct is Jeep' campaign, created by São Paulo agency F.biz and published in Brazil in October 2018, uses dual-protagonist films to argue that the exploratory instincts children display naturally find their adult expression behind the wheel of the 2019 Jeep Renegade.
The campaign comprises four films in total — two at 60 seconds and two at 30 seconds — released as a paired set, one led by a male protagonist and one by a female protagonist. The dual-format structure, titled 'Your Instinct is Jeep – Boy' and 'Your Instinct is Jeep – Girl', allows Jeep to address a broad cross-section of the Brazilian automotive market without diluting its central creative argument. Each film traces a narrative arc from childhood — children scrambling through terrain, climbing, exploring — to adulthood, where the same restless energy is channelled through Renegade ownership. The connective tissue across both films is Steppenwolf's 'Born to Be Wild', a track whose cultural weight in automotive advertising is well established and whose lyrical subject matter reinforces the instinct-as-identity proposition the campaign is built upon.
In Brazil, the campaign rolled out across broadcast television, pay television, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as airport displays and out-of-home media, according to coverage published by Propmark on October 30, 2018. The breadth of that media plan reflects the competitive pressure Jeep faced in the Brazilian compact SUV segment in 2018, where the Renegade sat as the brand's highest-volume model. Production took place at Serra do Cipó in Minas Gerais, a location whose dramatic natural landscape reinforces the off-road identity that Jeep has built globally and that the Renegade — despite its urban positioning — seeks to inherit.
The Brazilian automotive industry in 2018 was emerging from a prolonged contraction. Globally, compact and C-segment SUVs represented the largest single subsegment of the SUV market, with approximately 12.2 million units sold in 2018, according to JATO Dynamics. That macro expansion had a direct Brazilian dimension: the Jeep Renegade had established itself as a dominant force in the local compact SUV segment, and maintaining that position required creative work that went beyond specification-led advertising.
F.biz's strategic choice to anchor the campaign in instinct rather than capability is significant. Competitors in the Brazilian compact SUV segment — including the Volkswagen T-Cross, which launched in Brazil in 2018, and the Renault Captur, which had been gaining ground in the market — were competing heavily on rational grounds: interior space, fuel economy, urban manoeuvrability. By contrast, 'Your Instinct is Jeep' pursues an emotional register, positioning Renegade ownership not as a considered purchase but as an expression of a pre-existing personality trait. The argument is that the consumer does not choose a Jeep; they recognise themselves in one.
The dual-protagonist structure serves a specific strategic function in the Brazilian market. By releasing a male-led and a female-led version with equal production weight, F.biz signals that the Renegade's identity proposition is genuinely gender-inclusive rather than nominally so. This matters in a market where SUV purchasing decisions increasingly involve female buyers as primary decision-makers. According to Media Stellantis, Jeep has consistently positioned the Renegade as its entry point to the Brazilian market, making the emotional accessibility of this campaign directly relevant to volume objectives.
Felipe Mansur directed both films. Mansur also holds an art direction credit on the campaign, a dual role that gives the work an unusual degree of visual coherence — the decisions made at the storyboard stage and those made on location share a single authorial perspective. The campaign was produced by Alice Filmes, with cinematography by director of photography Agustín Claramunt, whose framing of the Serra do Cipó landscape gives both films a scale that broadcast automotive advertising in Brazil does not always achieve.
Creative direction came from Alessandro Bernardo at F.biz, with art direction from Magdalena Arrieta. Casting was handled by Claudia Secaf, a credit that carries more weight than it might initially appear: the campaign's entire emotional argument depends on the audience reading the childhood sequences as authentic rather than performed. Colour grading was completed by Osmar Junior, and visual effects by Clan VFX — both contributions essential in a film that moves between the heightened clarity of childhood memory sequences and the more textured realism of the Renegade footage.
The use of 'Born to Be Wild' by Steppenwolf as the campaign's musical spine is a deliberate act of cultural borrowing. The track carries decades of association with freedom, motorcycles, and open terrain — associations that the automotive industry has drawn on repeatedly. Within 'Your Instinct is Jeep', the track functions as a bridge between the childhood footage and the adult narrative, suggesting continuity rather than transformation. The films were shot at Serra do Cipó in Minas Gerais, Brazil, a location whose rocky outcrops and open skies provide a visual vocabulary of untamed terrain that anchors the Renegade's off-road heritage in a distinctly Brazilian landscape.
No verified performance data for 'Your Instinct is Jeep' is publicly available. No confirmed award wins for the campaign have been identified across Cannes Lions, the Effies, The One Show, D&AD, the Clios, the Webby Awards, or WARC Awards. Propmark published positive editorial coverage in Brazil on October 30, 2018, emphasising the campaign's dual-protagonist format and the breadth of its media rollout, but that coverage does not constitute measurable effectiveness data.
Clapboard scores this campaign 69 out of 100. That score reflects a campaign that executes its central idea with competence and production quality but stops short of the creative risk that would elevate it. The instinct-as-identity proposition is strategically coherent, and the dual-protagonist structure is a genuine differentiator in the Brazilian automotive market. The use of Steppenwolf's 'Born to Be Wild' gives the films immediate cultural legibility, though that same familiarity limits their distinctiveness — the track has accumulated enough automotive advertising associations globally that it functions as a genre signal as much as an emotional choice.
Structurally, the campaign's greatest strength is its consistency. Four films, two formats, one unified argument — executed across broadcast, digital, and out-of-home channels in Brazil — represent a disciplined media commitment that gives the creative idea genuine reach. The choice to film at Serra do Cipó in Minas Gerais rather than a generic international location roots the campaign in the Brazilian market in a way that supports local relevance without compromising the global Jeep brand identity. The gap between structural soundness and a higher Clapboard score lies in creative surprise: the films deliver what the brief likely demanded, but rarely exceed it.
'Your Instinct is Jeep' is a 2018 Jeep campaign created by F.biz in Brazil to launch the 2019 Renegade. It comprises two pairs of films — male- and female-led versions in 60-second and 30-second formats — arguing that childhood exploratory instincts naturally lead to Jeep Renegade ownership, set to Steppenwolf's 'Born to Be Wild'.
F.biz, a São Paulo-based advertising agency, created the campaign. Alessandro Bernardo served as creative director, Felipe Mansur directed both films and held an art direction credit, and Alice Filmes produced the work, with cinematography by Agustín Claramunt and colour grading by Osmar Junior.
Steppenwolf's 'Born to Be Wild' carries established cultural associations with freedom and open terrain. Within 'Your Instinct is Jeep', the track bridges childhood exploration sequences and adult Renegade footage, reinforcing the campaign's core argument that the instinct to explore is continuous rather than something acquired through a purchase decision.
The campaign was filmed at Serra do Cipó in Minas Gerais, Brazil. That location's rocky landscape and open terrain provided a visual vocabulary consistent with Jeep's off-road heritage while grounding the 2018 Brazilian campaign in a recognisably local geography rather than a generic international production environment.
No verified award wins for 'Your Instinct is Jeep' have been identified across Cannes Lions, the Effies, The One Show, D&AD, the Clios, the Webby Awards, or WARC Awards. Propmark published positive editorial coverage in Brazil in October 2018, but no formal industry recognition has been publicly confirmed for this campaign.
Clapboard scores 'Your Instinct is Jeep' 69 out of 100. The score reflects strong structural discipline — a coherent proposition, dual-protagonist format, and wide Brazilian media rollout — but notes that the campaign's reliance on familiar music and conventional instinct-to-ownership narrative limits its creative distinctiveness relative to its execution quality.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
