The Failures of Fiat

Here is another guest post by Sweaty as he takes on Fiat's American ad campaign:

Fiat is an Italian vehicle manufacturer that bought Chrysler in 2009. Perhaps they thought that buying the old, but failing car giant would jump-start an American invasion, and soon they'd have pint-sized cars driving all over the place.

I personally think the cars are too small for me to drive.  It seems like most of America agrees with me since I haven't seen many of them out on the road.

But the Fiat ad machine is determined to put a rolling cubicle into the garage of the American consumer.  And so they presented us with three commericals.

The first commercial came out a while ago, I believe right after Jennifer Lopez bought the Dolphins with then husband Marc Anthony. I guess she needed some more capital to finish the sale, because when Fiat came calling, she was their first “celebrity.” Maybe the star power would have worked, oh I don't know, a decade ago, when Jenny was still shaking her money maker on the block.

I don’t know if they were trying to play on some sort of everyman theme here, (Kids running after the car? Isn’t that a little Rocky-esque?) but whatever they were thinking, I don’t think it worked. 

So the braintrust went back to the drawing board and came up with this ad for the Super Bowl:

Every company who buys an ad slot for the Super Bowl knows they have to bring their "A" game, since these ads are expected to be great, and will be heavily scrutinized.  (Not to mention the fact that these companies spend millions on them)  So Fiat decided to go the "beer ad" route, utilizing two standard techniques to attract those 18-35 men: humor and sex appeal.

To push their Italian car model, they used...an Italian model. Every red-blooded man has likely been in this position, caught checking out a hot woman while she’s bending down. Whether it’s a view from the front or the back, we can’t help it.  It’s in our TNA DNA.

Except, after she slaps him, she starts seducitively teasing him while talking a foreign language he doesn’t know (or really care about). This culminates when he goes in for a smooch.  And he sees that the woman is actually a car.

If this happened to me, I would never want to see that car again.  It would be a constant reminder of the fact that I didn’t score with a hot Italian model, and almost kissed a car. I’d have model withdrawal flashbacks. I’d probably take bath salts to ease the pain, and be arrested by police for trying to bite some dude’s head off.

Despite the first two ads not quite working, Fiat still wanted one more shot.

It looks like they want to push the Abarth. So far Americans are not buying it, perhaps because its name sounds like slang for puking.  So how does Fiat try to solve this problem?  They decided to use "star" power.

So here we have “America’s bad boy” Charlie Sheen, driving around his mansion, with a bunch of women fawning over the fact he hasn’t hit any one yet.  He gets out, says some stuff about being on good behavior, and HOLY S*** THERE’S THAT HOT ITALIAN MODEL AGAIN! Get out of the screen, Charlie, you’re blocking the shot.

Again, maybe this would have worked well a few years ago, but these days, most people view Charlie Sheen as the punchline of the joke, not the deliverer of it.  He’s no longer on Two and a Half Men, his speaking tour was a failure, and to be honest, Sheen just looks old.

So once again, Fiat struck out.

If I were them, I might try to gear my ads to expatriates, who are used to small cramped cars from their days in their homelands. I think that trying to make a small car sexy and appeal to Americans is a bit of a fool’s errand.   In five years, you’ll probably be able to get an Abarth at any ZipCar pick up. 

And hey, while you're there, you might even be able to pick up Charlie Sheen too.  He'll probably need the work.