Ram’s ‘Premature Electrification’ Big Game Ad Will Charge EV Discussion

Ram has found its way to brand strength with competitive products and a lot of determined positioning around its long-running theme, “Built To Serve.” Only occasionally has Ram used humor in a major way to get attention, such as in its “Vikings” commercial during the 2018 Super Bowl that was in Minneapolis.

But after Ram runs its “Premature Electrification” spot during Super Bowl LVII this evening, Stellantis’s pickup-truck brand will have raised expectations about the next funny thing it might do.

And at the same time, Ram’s tongue-in-cheek spot equating owners’ frustrations with electric pickup trucks with a whispered medical condition underscores a real problem that Ram’s upcoming 1500 REV EV aims to address: range anxiety in truck owners.

The inability to count on all-electric pickups to reliably provide enough range can be the worst manifestation of the problem that continues to dog all-electric automotive transportation. Early entrants in the young electric-truck derby, Ford’s F-150 Lightning and an all-electric Chevrolet Silverado, haven’t been able to quell concerns among traditional pickup-truck buyers that use cases for the category outstrip the ability of the first EVs to assure enough range between charges.

“Early adopters who switch to electric trucks prematurely are living with range anxiety,” Olivier Francois, global chief marketing officer for Stellantis and the primary author of Stellantis brands’ long run of significant Super Bowl commercials, told me. “But timing is everything, so we’re extending our range and addressing this concern.”

Francois noted that, while Ram has demonstrated a concept BEV, the Ram 1500 BEV featured in “Premature Electrification” is the world’s first glimpse of the actual production vehicle that is due out in 2024. The truck’s appearance in the Big Game ad also kicks off for hand-raisers the ability to preorder the model online.

“Normally, a reveal pops in an auto show, but this time we’re revealing our new model on a big stage,” Francois said. “It’s literally the production car.”

Without revealing design or engineering specifics, Francois was careful to point out that the way the Ram 1500 BEV addresses the range-anxiety problem in pickup trucks isn’t simply a matter of battery technology. “It’s a very astute way to approach electrification, and that’s why we designed the commercial the way we did,” he said. “We would have loved to have a proof point at the end” about the technologies involved, but the Super Bowl ad wasn’t the place to do so.

The creative is partly modeled on the ubiquitous TV advertisements for over-the-counter pharmaceuticals that involve “real people” discussing their condition and how the drug helps them. “Premature Electrification” is more focused on, well, the condition.

“The relevance comes from our graphics, music, characters and everything,” Francois said. “We just observed how these [pharma] ads are done and tried to replicate it a bit.”

The 60-second spot is to air early in teh fourth quarter of the game, featuring Emmy-nominated actor Jason Jones as he addresses potential “premature electrification” anxieties, including power and payload, besides range.