Fiat has announced its U.S. advertising campaign for the reborn 500, strangely electing to ignore its most well-known brand-associated phrase here and instead opting for the tagline “Simply More.” While “Fix It Again, Tony!” may have a certain frisson lacking in the new message, we understand. What perplexes us is the tack they’ve chosen to take with the new spot.
Presumably, the target demographic for the Fiat 500 did not grow up going to the drive-in or listening to Elvis. Or even grow up on Cheap Trick covering Elvis. (Yes, that happened. Watch the result here.) Yet a subtle nod to the King’s “Jailhouse Rock” is the hook for the 500’s first North American ad spot, featuring a couple pulling into a drive-in movie. You can check it out video below. Have today’s twentysomethings ever even actually been to a drive-in movie?
The company’s rationale is that the 500 debuted in ’57, the same year as Elvis’s iconic single. But any American with 1950s fever is hooked on befinned Chevrolets, Forward-Look Chryslers, and two-seat Thunderbirds. Twinning the Cinquecento with American midcentury nostalgia and proclaiming it an icon in a country where it was never more than a curio seems like a wrongheaded grab for a history that never was. We do, however, approve of the “On a scale of 1 to 10, it’s a 500.” print ad, featuring a brown Cinquecento. That’s the kind of marketing that gets us right in that special place. You hear us, Fiat? Less Elvis, more brown. And maybe some Cheap Trick.
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