It's the kind of zealotry of which marketers—and employers—dream.
Professional voiceover artist Kelley Buttrick is a lifelong fan of Jeep, but has never gotten to work on its advertising. So she made an entire campaign appealing to executives at the automaker to hire her.
With help from digital marketing agency Prolifik, as well as family members and friends, Buttrick shot a series of videos telling the story of her love for the vehicles—and showing off her chops on mic. Below is one of the videos; there are seven more on the site.
When she was 7 years old, her stepdad built his own Jeep with parts from Willys and CJ models. Fast-forward to adulthood, and she's owned a string of them with her husband, including bringing home her daughter in a Grand Cherokee. (At the time of filming last spring, the kid, set to turn 16, was in line to inherit one as a hand-me-down, as her father upgraded to a new one.)
No stranger to the industry, Buttrick touts a reel that includes work for brands including Dick's Sporting Goods, Amtrak, Toys R Us, Whirlpool and McDonald's. But eager to take a proactive approach to landing her dream client, she decided to cook up the personalized blitz. It bears the hyper-specific tagline "A voice for any terrain," and lots of other on-the-nose references to straying from the beaten (or, to be specific, paved) path.
Overall, it's an intense and ambitious strategy, perhaps bodering on being a little awkward. The writing is spotty at moments (to Buttrick's credit, she pokes fun at her own poor use of grammar in a written postscript to one video—blaming nervousness from being on camera, outside her usual auditory comfort zone). But her overtures also seem heartfelt.
And she displays enough self-awareness about how her tactic could suggest poor judgment, making the whole endeavor seem more like a calculated risk fueled by passion and less like an unhinged fantasy. Indeed, her efforts to research past campaigns, and sell her qualifications as a "cool mom" right in the demo for the upcoming reboot of the Jeep Grand Wagoneer, come across as further signs of her genuine commitment to the brand.
As if that weren't all enough, Buttrick's campaign also includes direct mail and email components targeting the brass at Fiat Chrysler, which owns Jeep. While she says her initial overtures to leaders at the company produced some enthusiastic responses, it's not yet clear if the brand has any concrete plans to feature her.
But if the tagline from its own powerful Super Bowl spot this year—the best in this year's big game—is any indication, she's showing the right kind of spirit. "We don't make Jeep," that ad said. "You do."
