The Jeep® brand and Ann Druyan, the widow and collaborator of Carl Sagan, have joined together to create the 90-second video “Pale Blue Dot,” which launches the new 2021 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited 4xe and puts attention on efforts to combat climate change. With every completed view of “Pale Blue Dot” on Jeep brand’s YouTube page, the brand will make a contribution to the Coalition for Rainforest Nations and the Carl Sagan Institute of Cornell University to combat climate change.
On February 14th, 1990, famed scientist Carl Sagan gave the world an astonishing vantage point of the planet we call home. In 1981, Sagan, a member of the mission’s imaging team, began lobbying NASA to turn Voyager 1’s camera for one last look homeward, once it had completed the first reconnaissance of the outer planets. The resulting image with the Earth appearing as a tiny speck, miniscule in size from out beyond Neptune, almost 4 billion miles away, became known as “the pale blue dot.”
The brand worked together with Emmy and Peabody Award-winning American writer, producer, director Ann Druyan on creative elements of the piece, hinging on Carl Sagan’s narration. The Jeep brand’s “Pale Blue Dot” video includes passages from Sagan’s 1994 book “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space” in which he spoke in-depth about the photograph.
“Jeep is in a process of electrification of its lineup, and we feel a big responsibility to market it properly because it is not just a technical upgrade, it is a new chapter that opens for the brand,” said Olivier Francois, Chief Marketing Officer, FCA. “The core of the brand’s DNA is exploration, adventure, and freedom, so our customers already have a deep and powerful relationship with nature and with our planet.
“Entrusting us with passages from her husband Carl Sagan’s iconic ‘Pale Blue Dot’ oration is an act of faith and generosity from Ann that is absolutely incredible,” Francois added. “We very clearly felt an enormous duty to both protect their shared legacy, and also advocate for this universal message of caring for our planet by giving our global audience the ability to support two climate change causes that are very important to us both, by simply watching ‘Pale Blue Dot’ video across our social channels.”
“In October 2017, Olivier came to me with a request to use Carl’s iconic soliloquy to introduce a new Jeep model. For obvious reasons, I asked him to please come back to me when FCA made an electric Jeep,” said Ann Druyan, Founder and CEO of Cosmos Studios, maker of science-based entertainment. “Exactly two years passed and he called, saying, ‘We made you a car, Annie.’ In addition, he had the idea that the ‘Pale Blue Dot’ announcement could become a kind of Earth-friendly engine of its own, generating contributions for the two environmental nonprofits of my choice, through the unskipped views of the online video. FCA has already given the first installment of that support. If enough of us download the video and watch it, that contribution will increase more than tenfold.”
Source: Jeep
