Louise's Turkey of the Week

I absolutely can't stand this Fiat Grande Punto ad and I can't wait for the ASA to rap the knuckles of these blighters! Who made this? Krow, Leo Burnett? Whoever it was, dear oh dear!

Not that I am an expert in car advertising, but I have worked on a pitch-esque type thing on a car brand. Differentiating advertising is very important in this field. All cars get you from A to B, so what? You need uniqueness of vision, strategic strength and focus and a core feature played out as a benefit, communicated over and above the car category for the model to have cut-through and the brand to have resonance.

This ad has none of that. The strategy is too similar to what Mini used to do and what Corsa did (badly). The cityscape-urban-agile-car-thing has been done to death. There's just no differentiation. I think the agency knew this and decided to throw in the Italian heritage thing in for good measure, with cleverly painted cars as visual representations. Firstly, heritage isn't unique enough for me. Maybe that's all Fiat have to go on, if so, they need to sort it out. Secondly, ashamedly and laughably, the model isn't actually available in green shown in the ad, that's the best part! That's misleading advertising right there, those green Fiat Grande Punto car lovers will be sorely disappointed, when they discover that that's a made-up car! Technically there is a disclaimer, so the offending agency are probably ok, but really, why tease the consumer like that with a car they can never ever have!?

And having extremely jolting/repeated camera situations going on when you are presumably meant to be promoting a smooth driving experience is just idiotic. It's supposed to look good, but doesn't. The ad just doesn't work at all.

Sigh... awful!