> It's not even an ad for a vehicle
Isn't that either a little naive or disingenuous? Why are Land Rover sponsoring a 'Challenge' event? Because they want to sell their cars. And in order to sell their cars, they are promoting the leisure use of 4x4s. They want people to consider 4x4 as a natural part of outdoor leisure. It's an agenda adopted by most 4x4 manufacturers:
"Going off-road in a shiny 4x4 is the latest extreme sport; everybody's doing it, dontchaknow, so why not buy one of our 4x4s when you next come to buy a car".
There are plenty of adverts that now show 4x4s being used as a leisure pursuit (and often illustrating bad driving habits). They can no longer plausibly show cars zooming along on the open road, because the reality is different. But they can show 4x4s being driven in the 'freedom of The Great Outdoors'. It's the drip, drip, drip of acclimatisation (aka indoctrination).
Granted, most people won't use their cars for such purposes (it's an 'aspirational' image), but they will buy a much larger, fuel inefficient car than they need, be it a Land Rover, a BMW X5, a Ford Ranchero, A Volvo XC70, a Jeep, etc...
You can sell advertising to whomever you like, of course, but it just struck me that there was a bit of an incompatibility of philosophies. Thanks for taking the time to respond, though; my opinions on the matter aren't as strong as they might appear...
