What does the new Jeep Patriot have in common with Hulk, Spiderman and X-Men? Jeep’s newest compact SUV is going to have its own adventure with the help of Marvel Comics. Taking a new spin on the user-generated content trend, the auto maker recently partnered with Marvel to create the microsite PatriotAdventure.com where comic buffs can go online to help construct the plot of a story that highlights aspects of the Patriot and then be in line to receive a limited edition printed copy of the comic book.
The goal of the site, developed by bicoastal Organic, is to create awareness of the brand amongst youthful customers who may have always wanted a Jeep vehicle, but until now, may not have been able to afford one.
“When we started thinking about how we get to this group of people, the idea of comic books came up,” explained Adam Wilson, creative director at Organic. “What about this group of people? Who is looking at comic books these days.? And I was shocked when I saw the numbers of people who look at comic books and how mainstream graphic novels are.”
The project turned out to be serendipitous. Unbeknownst to the Organic team, its sister company in the Omnicom Group, PHD, which does all the media buying for Daimler Chrysler, was talking to Marvel at the same time and it “just all sort of came together,” according to Wilson.
Visitors to the site will find the first five pages of the 20-page comic book, “The Patriot Factor,” created by Marvel artist Bing Cansino. He established the characters and the storyline to get things going and he will then draw from ideas submitted by fans. Two pages at a time are open for submissions and then on the following page users are told where the story needs to end. For instance, Wilson points out that page six and seven were open for submissions and page eight features a couple of frames where the character opens a briefcase and the phone rings. “They have context. We didn’t want to leave it completely open ended,” he said. “We already picked a winner for page six and seven. The winners were really good at threading the needle from page five to eight.”
A new level of UGC
The day after Marvel and Jeep choose a submission as a winner, rough pencil drawings are posted by Cansino, followed by tighter pencils and ink versions and on the fourth day the actual color page is done. A new page opens as soon as a winner is picked on the previous page. Those who sign up and contribute to the comic book will receive a limited edition printed copy.
“This is user-generated content 3.0 in my opinion. To give people the tools or the assets and the context to create something online is one thing. But one of the things that set this thing apart is this is a tangible thing people will get when they are done creating it,” Wilson said. “And the people who win will get listed as an author. That’s a pretty cool thing, if your submission wins you have this comic book on your coffee table with you listed as an author and two very cool American brands–Marvel and Jeep–right there on the front page.”
What’s also cool about the site is because it is crowd sourced, little communities can form. “I can go in and comment on someone’s submission and actually approve upon it if I choose,” Wilson explained. “And if they like the way I improve it, they can comment back and say, ‘Hey, that’s what we should go with.’ So when Marvel sits down to choose a winning submission, we look at the comment threads as well and how the idea evolved.”
He said the microsite is being promoted on sites like MySpace.com/jeep , Marvel.com, CollegeHumor.com and third party automotive sites including autos.msn.com. The campaign was also promoted at the Chicago Auto Show and at Comic Con.
PatriotAdventure.com is a pre-launch campaign for Jeep. On March 15, Organic’s sister agency BBDO will unleash a whole arsenal of TV commercials along with a whole new web creative designed by Organic.
Wilson said Organic’s engineering department deserves a standing ovation. “They basically built this full blown 2.0 application from scratch. Not only did they build this beautiful fluid full-blown Web 2.0 application, but they also built a whole back-end publishing system where we can quickly go in and look at submissions, approve them or disapprove them. And Marvel can go in and upload its pencils in a timely manner. There is this whole back-end engine to this thing that is quite amazing.”
