Great article today in AdAge about Fiat developing a car together with consumers. What I found even more interesting is that Fiat chose Brazil as there market to develop this.
Fiat Mio (name of the car) mean Fiat Mine in Portuguese (and Spanish) – their tagline: “A car to call your own”
“Brazil was chosen as the home for Fiat Mio because it’s a digitally sophisticated and innovative market, and Fiat’s largest after the company’s native Italy. Fiat is Brazil’s No. 1 carmaker, with a 24.8% market share, and the country’s fifth-largest advertiser, spending about $80 million a year.” – Laurel Wentz, AdAge
We have seen this idea of crowd-sourcing and involving the community in making better products / services implemented before, particularly Starbucks and Dell.
In Fiat’s case, individuals will not only make recommendations on design, functionality and other aspects of the car, but also on the actual marketing and communications strategy. The site is available in Portuguese and English; setup very much like a Digg (voting on ideas) and incorporating various social media elements, including Twitter – this will definitely be an interesting story to follow and an even better case study.
