Fiat 500 Sales Missing Targets, Chrysler Blaming Marketing Strategy
Sales targets for the Fiat 500 were set at an ambitious 6,000 units per month, and surprise surprise, the car isn’t meeting them. This might be due to the fact that it’s a subcompact, foreign branded car in a market where gasoline is (relatively) cheap and large vehicles reign supreme. Or it could be the fault of your marketing agency, if you ask Chrysler.
Fiat marketing chief Oliver Francois told trade publication Advertising Age that the brand has an “awareness problem”, and apparently, a product placement in a Jennifer Lopez music video didn’t help matters. Fiat has also reportedly dumped their ad agency, which formerly employed Fiat North America CEO Laura Sove.
So far Fiat has sold 11,088 examples, far off the 72,000 unit annual target. The axe has to fall on someone, and we’ll be waiting to see who ends up taking responsibility for this matter.
[Source: Advertising Age]
More by Derek Kreindler
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True, the ads are more about J-Lo than about the virtues of the car itself. I hope they have better commercials actually showing the coolness of this car, especially suited for Urbanites!
The poor sales are the results of poor marketing, particularly at the dealers level. The dealers do not even stock brochures for the car, unlike Mini, Hyundai, Kia, Toyota and nearly all their competitors. The Fiat dealers simply said they are going green and refer people to the corporate website. How it is green when I have to print many pages from my own printer? Not to mention of the time wasted going from link to link in the various webpages. Besides, many people would want a brochure as part of the history records of their purchase. How it is green when a little thick 3 inch by 3 inch 50 page book is printed, but it has no information on interior choices or specifications. Even these are difficult to find. The simple fact is that manufacturers and dealers that shimp on printed sales materials are simply not doing as well, just look at poor sales at Maybach vs. Bentley or has-been Cadillac vs BMW.