• What’s this effort by Land Rover all about?
• The campaign is getting a lot of traction on social media . . . how will this help Land Rover?
  

“In my opinion . . .”

Land Rover is getting some traction on the Web with its involvement in this team’s 30,000-mile journey across Europe which the automaker supported by giving its Bursary prize to the group along with the largest monetary award donation to date. The team leader, Andy Campbell, who became paralyzed eight years ago, will be traveling in a wheelchair. He is doing the journey for the Chutkara Initiative, which aims to provide outdoor activities for people with spinal cord injuries.

Pushing the Limits is reposting Land Rover’s content and sharing their own points of view from the journey with a range of social media including Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. In addition, the Land Rover logo appears throughout the Pushing the Limits website, where the team is encouraging interactions with consumers by asking them to recommend stops on the tour that have the potential to demonstrate the go-anywhere capabilities of the Defender 110, per Land Rover.

As a recipient of the 2012 Bursary award, Pushing the Limits will support a disabled adventurer’s plans to encourage understanding of the geography and to show that exploration is within everyone’s reach, whatever their ability, per Land Rover. With this award, Land Rover is promoted via the Pushing the Limits team Web site and social media campaign as well as its own Web- and social media-based updates.

Land Rover seems to be focusing on its qualities of ruggedness, reliability, adventure and exploration that may have been lost over the last few decades. That’s good!

At one time, Land Rover was the quintessential vehicle for reliably crossing vast deserts and dense jungles the world over, but over the last few decades, as the company changed ownership five times, the reputation for being stone-reliable lessened in the consumer line of SUVs, due in part to all the added luxury, weight and complexity in the top-of-the-line Range Rover models.

However, Land Rover and Range Rover’s off-road abilities and traction technology remain second to none, and the marque still holds the Royal Warrant to the British Royal family, making it the official supplier o vehicles to the Queen of England.

This public relations move is a good one because it has a lot of heart and back-story that parallels the Land Rover legacy of ruggedness and adventure and it will remind those who follow this trek that Land Rover can get to its destination no matter what the circumstances . . . just like Andy Campbell.

Image credit: Land Rover Media Centre