• by Karl Greenberg , August 1, 2011

Fiat is launching its first national ad campaign in the U.S. this month. The national and cable broadcast, print, digital and experiential effort, via Southfield, Mich.-based AOR Impatto, bows with a TV advertisement but includes a range of other elements with a focus on programs to get the car in front of potential buyers.

The campaign, with the tag line "Simply More," starts with vintage footage from 1957 of a Fiat 500 rolling into a drive-in movie. Elvis' 1957 hit, "Jailhouse Rock," plays as the setting morphs into a modern take on drive-in theater and the 2011 Fiat 500. Two additional feature-focused TV ads will follow the launch spot.

Laura Soave, Fiat's U.S. marketing chief, tells Marketing Daily that the campaign is intended to tout the brand's heritage in the U.S. "It is a reengineered icon and it has a history story," she says, adding that the effort is also tied through experiential programs to the return of the drive-in movie itself. "Urban drive-ins are popping up again all over America, so it's bringing back a cool old-school experience."

Indeed, Fiat will launch a series of "pop-up" drive-ins showing vintage films. But in keeping the theme, the movies will be original versions of films that have been remade. Soave says each event will have some 50 Fiat 500s on hand in which people can sit to watch the movies or take out for test drives.

The first drive-in will be in New York's Times Square on Aug. 19, with the Jumbotron serving as movie screen showing the original "Ocean's 11." The cars will be there, but because the square is now a pedestrian mall, there won't be test drives. After New York, the drive-in events will be in Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, and Washington, D.C., with smaller activations in secondary markets. "Ultimately, it is very important for the brand to have people touch and experience the car," says Soave.

The campaign also has print ads that will feature lines like "Form & Function meet. And begin a torrid affair"; "Bigger isn't better. It's just harder to park"; and "139.6 inches. Every one tells a story."

Soave says that, so far, buyers of the new car, which went on sale in March, have run the gamut. "We started selling the first vehicles in March, with the majority going to diehard fans, many of them members of the U.S. Fiat fan clubs," she says, adding that 20% of sales of the re-envisioned 500 car have gone to people who had never heard of the brand.

"I have owners who are 16-year-olds who have never driven a manual and learned in the dealership parking lot, and an 85-year-old pig farmer in northern Michigan, who wanted a fuel-efficient car to drive around town." She says buyers are about 70% male, and that the age skew is bi-modal. "It's not a bell curve," she says. "We have lots of buyers in their 30's and younger and buyers over 50."

Fiat is launching the campaign now, per Soave, because there is enough inventory in the pipeline and retail operations on the ground to justify it. The company now has 94 Fiat Studios (Fiat showroom environments for the brand at Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram dealerships) with a goal of reaching 130 studios by year end, the majority in major East/West coastal markets.

Soave says that while national advertising is important, opportunities for consumers to see and feel the vehicles will make the big difference in consideration. "To me, advertising is the necessary evil, since the quickest way to get awareness is traditional national print, TV, and out-of-home, but what really changes consumer mindset is when they get in it and experience it. We spent lots of time over the past year doing grassroots efforts around the country, and we are going to keep doing that."