“Blazing Trails”
Stories of adventure sagas are something we have, and continue, to relish as a society. From classics like Kidnapped to Don Quixote, goals set against difficult odds automatically pique our interest. We invest not only in the players of the story but the apparatus that get them there.
Taking up their own challenge, INEOS Automotive present the off-road utility vehicle Grenadier. Delivered in a micro docu-webseries format, ‘Trails’ follows the INEOS team as they take their prototype out onto the arid, yet primordially stunning plains of south Australia. Testing a piece of cutting-edge mechanical engineering such as this, in such extreme heat, is bound to capture the imagination. It’s also a well thought out narrative for a piece of brand film: just how far can something new be pushed until it seems old?
Filmed through a single camera set up, INEOS’s first episode boasts fantastically crisp images of vistas and minute detail of the nuts and bolts at work. Exactly what the company’s type of following are looking for on LinkedIn. With around 700 likes on that platform, and over 64K views on YouTube in only 1 week, INEOS have clearly tapped into casual viewership alongside the usual die hard fans. In terms of deeper insight, INEOS are unsurprisingly well positioned in our analysis of the U.K’s top 100 brands for the week ending August7th 2022.
What further works in this piece’s favour is that there are very real stakes, not only in terms of the individuals undertaking the journey but the risk that comes from such documented transparency. Consider how investing eyes might react should the vehicle underperform? That said, the Grenadier may have big tyres to fill - conceived as the modern-day replacement for the iconic Land Rover Defender – but it’s future is already mapped out towards compatibility with Hydrogen fuel cell power, so it seems a long and captivating road ahead.
