FIAT - Floundering Italian Advertising Talent?
Monday, November 22, 2010 at 11:42PM I just caught an eyeful of the supposed "first new FIAT commercial" aimed at the US Market, via jalopnik. And folks, I almost lost that Tiramisu I had for dessert. Porca Miseria!
FIAT has two monumental challenges in re-entering the American market. Not only must it overcome the fears of notorious Italian unreliability and indifferent service it engendered in older consumers 30 years ago, but it must essentially launch a NEW BRAND for the majority of their target entry-level buyer segment, who are too young and too car-ignorant to have ever known what a FIAT was in the first place. And if this ad is any indication of what they are bringing to the table, Sergio Marchionne may as well stay soakin' in that hottub with Berlusconi until they cook up something sexier.
If have rarely seen such bland, meaningless stock imagery combined with such artless cinematography of the actual car. The first shot where we actually see the product (after 35 nauseating seconds!), the car drives over a distracting manhole cover in the road. Couldn't they have chosen a different snippet of footage to start off with?? Combine this with the computer generated "flower-petal" imagery (at 0:41 and 0:52) which is blatantly yanked from the original VW beetle and iMac campaigns from c.1999, and seems utterly out of place in this commercial.
The messaging touts the car as an expression of the "Italian Way" yet we never are shown the original car or how pervasive and loved it is throughout Italy. No, instead we are subjected to cloying imagery of an archetypal Italian Grandma kissing a child, and fields of olive trees. The only reference to FIAT's history is the parade of badges towards the end, which will bewilder most Americans (who, as I said, have no real idea what a FIAT is) and only emphasizes the fickle nature of the company's branding over the years.
In the end, I am left trying to take stock of what I am supposed to come away with. Where is the "Zoom Zoom" or the "Let's Motor"? "Life is Best when Driven" probably sounded cool in Italian (I have a strong suspicion this ad was done by an Italian agency because the cheese factor reeks distinctively of Parmeggiano) but in English it just sits there in all its inglorious passive voice.
I could rant like this for hours, but I think i'll shut up and let you watch it already!
La Dolce Vita, it ain't!
And the music was awful too, wasn't it? But at least they didn't use Opera...
500, Fiat, US, advertising, commercial, launch, publicity in Advertising Review
Reader Comments (8)
Well it's no Monica Bellucci for Dolce and Gabbana: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti-OiD9yAZI&feature=related
I find it confounding that Italy's flair for design and cinema never translate into good advertising...
sometimes its good. campari?
A Fellini style ad would have been interesting. Have a depressed suicidal Toyota owner seeing a vision from above in the form of a FIAT 500 :)
It had a Moby soundtrack so you knew it would be rough....I get it - it's a lifestyle ad and how the 500 fits in it - but it comes off like a bad mix of a Levy's, Tampons, and J Crew ad instead of a car that'll re-introduce a brand basically new to this market again.
A longish clip from "Roman Holiday" showing Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck and the FIAT 500 Topolino would be a big improvement. A segue to the present day would be easy and very effective -- "Roman Holiday" is the most romantic movie ever made after all. And why not use one of those great original logos instead of that anemic new one?
Well it's no Monica Bellucci for Dolce and Gabbana: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti-OiD9yAZI&feature=related
i enjoy monica bellucci as much as the next straight guy, but i find this to be almost as bad, albeit obviously going about it in a different way. one is mawkish and treacly, the other is just slavish. both are offensive to the tastes.
yeah that commercial is epic bad....no style, no charm, and for some reason i keep thinking it's going to be an ad for an insurance company or a tampon....but it ends up not being an ad for either of those things!