Choose Your Own Adventure: Jeep Patriot Edition

It was probably inevitable that someone would take the faddish Choose Your Own Adventure books concept and apply it to online video. That someone is Jeep, who along with agency Organic has created a fun microsite that let’s you guide the decisions of a band of four friends on a backwoods treasure hunt starring its Patriot model. There are 44 scenes in total, all shot from a first-person perspective and filled with a host of ancillary characters and a bunch of possible dead ends. The action flows nicely, plus (nice Web-centric touch) the script is personalized to the user’s name, fears and other attributes. My only gripe is the tone is a little too goofy and flip, a little too “Friends,” to qualify as a true linear descendant of the books so fondly remembered by the folks in Jeep’s target demographic. But overall, great experience.

Earlier this year, Jeep began work on an interactive comic book and invited Web users to help write it. This new effort, called “The Way-Beyond Trail,” joins the comic effort to create a grouping of Web initiatives at PatriotAdventure.com.