Jeep Has Put The Bruce Springsteen Superbowl Commercial Back Online

Every year, automakers spend thousands of dollars on commercials for the Superbowl. Sometimes, they’ll come up with strange competitions to encourage interest in a product, thus justifying the expensive marketing strategies. Often, some of the budgets will go on hiring the services of a celebrity, which is what Jeep did with Bruce Springsteen. But following a DUI arrest, Jeep was forced to backtrack and suspend the video. The charges have since been dropped and the ad has been re-uploaded, and you can now watch the video, featuring Springsteen in an old Willys Jeep, the spiritual forefather of the modern-day Wrangler.

If you haven’t been following the story, Springsteen was arrested in the Gateway National Recreation Area in Sandy Hook, New Jersey after admitting to consuming “two small shots of tequila” offered to him by fans. These were consumed within 20 minutes of him getting on his motorcycle, and the park ranger who arrested Springsteen noted that he “smelt strongly of alcohol” and “had glassy eyes”. Despite this, Springsteen passed several field sobriety tests, although he initially refused a breathalyzer test. When his blood alcohol content was finally examined, it was reportedly measured at just 0.02, a quarter of the 0.08 limit in the state.

US Magistrate Judge Anthony Mautone decided that Springsteen’s punishment should be a fine of $540, and prosecutors have dropped the charges, but had his blood alcohol content been over the limit and he had been convicted, he would have been facing fines of up to $5,000 and as much as six months in federal prison. Jeep also would likely have disassociated itself with the musician, but a spokesperson has explained that since all the facts have been uncovered and the artist is not facing federal charges any longer, “unpausing the film” has been deemed the right thing to do. Still, this little entanglement has meant that Jeep didn’t get as much value out of the ad as it was expecting.