"Really?" Olivier Francois asked quizzically, wearing the expression of someone who just took a shot of cough medicine. It was April 2011, and we had just asked the global CEO of the Fiat brand about negative responses to the Jennifer Lopez ad. "Oh my god, no! It's a huge success!" he said. It wasn't.
The company's subsequent ad for the Abarth , which featured a Romanian supermodel and ran during the 2012 Super Bowl, fared only a little better. Its message was clear?the Abarth is supposed to be spicy and alluring and even erotic?but at the end of the day, it was a car ad with a babe. Not only did Kia run one with Adriana Lima the same day, but it poked fun at the stereotypical cupcake-and-car ad format.
This week, a new Fiat 500 ad entitled "Immigrants" debuted, and it's as smart as its predecessors were misguided:
The spot opens with several Fiat 500s driving around postcard-ready pastel villages on the Amalfi Coast, with the action set to a 100-year-old Italian pop song. The cars zip past bicycle riders, old boats, a wedding, and, if the theme isn't obvious enough, even a large sign for a pizzeria. The music continues as one of the 500s drives right off a cliff; it's borderline slapstick. His compatriots enter the water more gracefully, and all emerge in New York accompanied by the pop rap of the not-so-Italian Pitbull. At the end, a voice-over says, "The next wave of Italians has come to America."
On the whole, it's fun and overtly Italian. Who thought the Fiat brand could?or should?be anything else? This is the company that, in the 1950s, built a car with wicker seats, no doors, and a fringed top and then called it the Jolly. The new 500 is a 101-hp car in standard trim, with a small back seat and an EPA rating that's bettered by the Ford Focus. Fiat is right to sell the strong points of the car in the new ad. In essence, it's the car-commercial equivalent to Whole Foods: We're seeing the fairytale journey of a product's humble, authentic roots in some far-off romantic place and its eventual arrival in the Big City.
- Comparison Test: Fiat 500 Abarth vs. Mini John Cooper Works
- Long-Term Test: 2012 Fiat 500 Sport
- Instrumented Test: Fiat 500C
The closest neighborhood to this location is called DUMBO, for "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass." Seriously.
Not to go all Don Draper, but branding and image are possibly even more important than the reality of a product like the Fiat 500. Who cares that U.S.-market cars are made in Mexico (and European models are made in Poland, not Italy) and were significantly re-engineered to make them more friendly to American drivers? Ragu, the most popular spaghetti sauce in the U.S., is named for an Italian word and is manufactured in a Dutch-owned factory in Kentucky. Near the end of the Fiat ad, the voice-over line is brilliant?viewers get the impression that Fiat is just launching here, even though sales started slowly through a troubled dealer network over a year ago. Is this a sign that Fiat's execs realize it's a fine time to reboot the brand's U.S. launch, and that they now know what image its cars should project? We'll have to wait for the follow-up to have our answer.