Jeep takes risks by reviving Cherokee moniker

Sensitivity over ethnic names changed auto marketing

The 2014 Jeep Cherokee revives the Cherokee name, which was discontinued in 2002. Jeep says research revealed a fondness for the name, and the firm said feedback has not been ‘disparaging.’

Coming to a showroom near you for 2014: the first sport utility vehicle in its class equipped with a nine-speed automatic transmission. It’s also the first to offer a parallel-parking feature. And, in four-wheel-drive models, the rear axle disconnects automatically for fuel efficiency.

Oh, yes: Its name is the Jeep Cherokee.

Hold on — wasn’t that model name retired more than a decade ago? Wasn’t it replaced by the Jeep Liberty for 2002?

Yet now, in a time of heightened sensitivity over stereotypes, years after ethnic, racial, and gender labeling largely has been erased from sports teams, products, and services, Jeep is reviving a Native American model name. Why?

“In the automobile business, you constantly have to reinvent yourself, and sometimes it’s best to go back to the future,” said Allen Adamson, managing director of the New York office of Landor Associates, a brand and corporate identity consultancy.

Jeep, a division of the Chrysler Group LLC, explained that its market research had revealed a marked fondness for the name. The 2014 version, said Jim Morrison, director of Jeep marketing, “is a new, very capable vehicle that has the Cherokee name and Cherokee heritage. Our challenge was, as a brand, to link the past image to the present.”

The company says it respects changed attitudes toward stereotyping. “We want to be politically correct, and we don’t want to offend anybody,” Mr. Morrison said. Regarding the Cherokee name, he added: “We just haven’t gotten any feedback that was disparaging.”

Here’s some: “We are really opposed to stereotypes,” said Amanda Clinton, a spokesman for the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. “It would have been nice for them to have consulted us in the very least.”

But, she added, the Cherokee name is not copyrighted, and the tribe has been offered no royalties for its use. “We have encouraged and applauded schools and universities for dropping offensive mascots,” she said, but stopped short of condemning the revived Jeep Cherokee because, “institutionally, the tribe does not have a stance on this.”

So far, marketing materials for the 2014 Cherokee model — which will be built at the Toledo Assembly Complex — have eschewed references to, or portrayals of, Native Americans and their symbols. That’s a far cry from past years, when marketers went beyond embracing stereotyping to reveling in it. Indeed, Chrysler’s restraint seems an indication of just how much things have changed.

Past stereotyping

For decades, Native American tribal names have helped to propel automobiles out of showrooms. Return to the era when Pontiac’s sales brochures carried illustrations comparing its six-cylinder engines to six red-painted, feathered cartoon Indian braves rowing a canoe.

Or review Pontiac’s marketing copy, which proclaimed that “among the names of able Indian warriors known to the white race in America, that of Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas and accepted leader of the Algonquin family of tribes, stands pre-eminent.” Of course, the visage of the chief was appropriated as a hood ornament.

Many other tribes were adopted as marketing tools. Long gone is the Jeep Comanche pickup truck, sold in the late 1980s, along with the Jeep Comanche Eliminator.

Native American names are still in the market: Consider Indian motorcycles, about to resurface under new owner Polaris Industries. And Chrysler’s full-sized SUV, the Grand Cherokee, introduced in 1992 as a larger version of the Cherokee, is still a market leader.

Native Americans have not been alone in automobile cultural stereotyping. In the 1950s, advertising for the Studebaker Scotsman didn’t actually use the word cheapskate, but prospective buyers were informed that “when you and your family sit in your thrifty Scotsman... this great Studebaker body cradles you, your family, and friends in safety.”

Although nothing indicates that the General Motors Viking was discontinued in the early 1930s because of protests by outraged Scandinavians, it’s a certainty that no automaker’s copy writers would dare write today that “the development of the Viking car closely parallels the development of the Viking youth in attaining manhood,” where “only those best fitted for leadership survived to contribute to the strength and superiorities of the race.”

Also hard to fathom today is the Studebaker Dictator, “Champion of its Class,” discontinued after 1937, when the rise of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini gave the model name an unpleasant odor.

Name conundrum

Even aside from the use of an Native American tribal name in the Jeep Cherokee, the risks are high in the introduction of any vehicle. Automobile experts estimate the cost of renewing a nameplate such as the Jeep Cherokee at more than $50 million.

Why then return to a discontinued brand?

“Coming up with new names is very expensive these days,” said Mr. Adamson, the brand consultant, because trademark research, focus groups, and legal due diligence can be costly. The growing quest for viable names — and the third-rail of stereotypical labeling — are possible explanations for the advent of such hard-to-spell monikers as the Volkswagen Tiguan and the growing adoption of concocted names like Acura, Elantra, Infiniti, and Lexus — as well as the proliferation of alphanumeric designations.

“New models have all of these three-letter-code designations that mean nothing to me,” said Stephen Hayes, a New York automotive historian and a collector of printed auto memorabilia, of nameplates such as MKX, RX350, F-150, 328i, QX56, and GL450 that populate the auto world. “Companies don’t name their cars as colorfully anymore.”

Nevertheless, “just the name of a brand itself is one of the most powerful marketing tools you have,” Mr. Adamson said. “Automobile brands define who you are, and Cherokee summons up rich associations. The Jeep Cherokee was a winner from the start, introduced in 1974 as an SUV with the latest gadgets.”

Giving the new Jeep its old tribal name may have seemed just another acceptable risk. “Names can be polarizing and can cause controversy, so you have to be careful,” Mr. Adamson said. But, he said, opposition to brand names has become something of a national pastime. “Anytime you introduce a name, someone will be upset, because any name could potentially be an issue with some portion of the population.”

Strangely, though, a name that has zero associations is even more likely to sabotage a new model’s introduction. “If you have a name that offends nobody, then you end up with a forgettable brand,” Mr. Adamson said.