What Bugs You?

You know what bugs me? When companies don’t preserve simple websites that they really should do something with over the years.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at a pair of Jeep ads that very cleverly make the popular Wrangler look like bugs on display in entomology cases.

Jeep ad from November 2006

The first ad today promotes the Wrangler two-door. Clever, yes? They even have a semi-dissected version of the Jeep in the upper right. How cute!

The bottom right includes a picture of the Jeep “in the wild” with a handwritten note to visit jeep.com/07wrangler.

Note, of course, that the section references the 2007 Wrangler, specifically. That makes this kind of section tough to preserve long-term. Until the year 3007, this section won’t really be all that relevant again.

And, indeed, checking jeep.com/07wrangler today shows that Jeep has abandoned the section:

As far a page-not-found pages go, the Jeep one is pretty good. In case the small print is too tiny to read, it says:

The path ends here, but your journey doesn’t. Choose a vehicle below to get back on course.

That’s a nice page and certainly better than giving the viewer nothing to do. But it doesn’t hide the fact that /07wrangler does not redirect to the current Wrangler page, which would be very simple to do.

Okay, so let’s move on to the next ad that appeared in a magazine the next month:

Jeep ad from December 2006

Once again, that’s some really clever work, making the four-door Jeep Wrangler Unlimited look exceptionally insect-like. What great visuals!

And we are once again treated to a photograph in the bottom right-hand corner showing the handwritten request to visit jeep.com/07wranglerunlimited (slightly different, of course, than the URL above):

I’m not a Jeep person, so I guess I never really realized that the 4-door Wrangler was referred to as the Wrangler Unlimited. Even today, the only obscure mention I find about the Wrangler Unlimited is when you try to use the Build-And-Price tools on Jeep.com.

That doesn’t matter, because something else is QUITE clear:

Once again, Jeep has let the old advertised subsection disappear. That’s unfortunate because they still make 4-door Wranglers, regardless of whatever they call them.

Again, as far as page-not-found pages go, this one isn’t bad. But Jeep’s web policies could be better.

Some days, you’re the windshield.

Some days, you’re the bug.

Leave a Reply