Tag: Jeep

Burger King and Jeep turn Twitter hacking into PR opportunity

Earlier this week, the official Twitter account for Burger King was hacked and turned into a McDonald’s feed. Now, the same thing has happened to @Jeep. The Jeep logo was replaced with a Cadillac logo and the hackers tweeted things like “We got sold to @Cadillac because we caught our employees doing these in the bathroom” with an image of a bottle of prescription-only pills. Jeep soon got control of the account and deleted the tweets tweeted by the hacker.

For a brand, crises like these are of course serious, but handled correctly they can also become an opportunity. Often an account that is involved in a similar incident gains a lot of followers, thanks to the increased attention.

This time, both Burger King and Jeep turn the hacks into a PR opportunity by posting some clever tweets. Burger King seized the opportunity to send their wishes to a brand that was the victim of the same type of crisis, which showed a human side of the brand.

burger king hacked twitter tweet

Jeep cleverly responded with this tongue in cheek tweet.

jeep twitter hacked tweet

As you see, both tweets got loads of retweets and were marked as favourite by many followers. Also, note the dots before the Twitter handle, enabling all their followers to see the tweets, not only the ones that follow both accounts.

I’m lovin it 😉

The Swedish Language Council dilutes the Jeep brand

The Swedish Language Council call themselves “the official language cultivation body of Sweden” and it has “no legal powers but fulfil their task through recommendations”. That means that whatever use of the Swedish language the Council recommends, most official bodies and media will conform to it. However, one of the Council’s recommendations on how to use the Swedish language is very unlucky, namely the translation of SUV to Swedish, which is translated to stadsjeep, or “city jeep”.

One could argue that it infringes on a company’s immaterial assets, in a way that might degenerate the Jeep brand name. I’ve been posting about this before, without much reaction.

On the Council’s website there is a FAQ section which contain the very question on how to translate SUV.

In Swedish:

FrÄga:

Hur skriver man biltypen SUV sÄ att alla förstÄr vad som menas?

Svar:

Skriv stadsjeep.

SUV av eng. Sport Utility Vehicle Àr onödigt att införa.

In English:

Question:

How do you write the type of car called SUV so that everyone will understand what you mean?

Answer:

Write stadsjeep/city jeep.

SUV from English Sport Utility Vehicle is unnecessary to introduce.

I think they are wrong for two reasons. First, regarding the word “stad” (city). A survey by Bil Sweden showed that SUV’s are predominantly not bought by people in the city, so the term city jeep makes little sense. Second, Jeep is a registered trademark by DaimlerChrysler and it can’t simultaneously be a registered trademark, and a generic term in the same product category.

Recently some Swedish media have started to use the term suv (pl. suvar) which is more appropriate. I could learn to use that term and hopefully the Swedish Language Council could reconsider before SUV Expo in TĂ€by in april when a lot of media will report about “suvar”.