Digital fanfare for Fiat 500

Fiat will this evening launch its much-anticipated new-look Fiat 500 at the London Eye, promoted by a series of short on-line films created by digital media group AKQA.

The Italian car manufacturer will unveil its latest ‘cinquecento’ within a capsule on the London Eye. The launch is to be supported by a digital marketing push, as well as an above-the-line advertising campaign.

The AKQA film series, featuring journalist Danny Wallace, goes live today across websites including MSN, Lycos, MTV, TimesOnline and YouTube, as well as Fiat’s own website, www.fiat.co.uk.

According to AKQA creative director James Hilton, the film series forms just one element of a number of digital initiatives it has created for the launch, including the design of a Fiat 500 microsite and a digital car configurator.

The digital group has worked with Fiat for just over a year, having won a creative pitch in 2006.

The documentary-style series, directed by Hilton, takes its cue from the brand positioning of the Fiat 500 as an ‘everyday masterpiece’, drawing parallels with everyday items from chopsticks to T-shirts and marbles.

Hilton says, ‘The brief was essentially very simple – to make sense of the idea of an everyday masterpiece. Our job was to bring that message to life: to educate people as to what an everyday masterpiece is, using the whole list of everyday objects as part of the advertising campaign.’.

The everyday masterpiece theme is understood to have been devised by Fiat’s in-house marketing team, with ad agency Krow working on above-the-line advertising.