Jeep's new ad suggests its SUV is good for families... and for making them

Few brands would dare to turn a car review about backseat intimacy into a full-fledged marketing idea. Jeep, however, has decided to have a bit of fun with it.

The brand’s new social-first campaign, “The Family SUV”, stars comedian Iliza Shlesinger in a mockumentary-style sketch that playfully tests the limits of automotive advertising. The premise stems from a genuine Jalopnik article that crowned the Jeep Grand Wagoneer “the best car to have sex in,” a line that in most boardrooms would have been quietly forgotten. Jeep instead chose to make it the centrepiece.

The video opens in classic car-launch fashion, with Jeep Brand CEO Bob Broderdorf talking through the Grand Wagoneer’s design and pricing. Enter Shlesinger, introduced as a creative consultant with a flair for the unorthodox. Her proposal? Embrace the vehicle’s “sex appeal” outright, suggesting rebranding it as the Grand Shagoneer and positioning it as both family-friendly and passion-ready.

What follows is a series of delightfully awkward exchanges between the comedian and a visibly uncomfortable marketing panel. Shlesinger insists that her cheeky campaign can “move units,” unveiling mock ads where she plays a flustered housewife opposite a stoic husband who just wants to talk about cargo space. When he praises the SUV’s roomy interior, she quips that all this “talk about features” has made her “hot under her apron.”

By the end, the team half-jokingly names her “Chief Family Officer,” leading to the final wink of the campaign: “Yes. F is for Family.”

Developed with Chicago-based agency Highdive, the campaign debuted on Jeep’s YouTube channel on 23 October, followed by cut-downs across social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook, X and TikTok.

In an industry where car commercials often blend into one another, Jeep’s experiment stands out as a self-aware jab at both marketing clichés and brand seriousness. It is a bold attempt to prove that even the most respectable family SUV can take a joke, and perhaps park itself somewhere between wholesome and slightly wicked.