JKR

“Designers Wanted” touts the new Fiat 500 ad, going on to explain that with the huge spectrum of customisation options available on the car, one is able to personalise it to be yours and yours alone. The line which jarred for me was the claim for “more stickers than you can shake a stick at”. This taps into the big trend for enabling and celebrating everyone’s creativity. And for sure there are  plenty of “amateurs” who have the natural talent to create aesthetically pleasing design. But just as the X-factor gets slammed for being a karaoke version of real music, so such an approach to design, democratic though it is, does tend to make the brand feel less, not more, special.

Now clearly as someone who trained to be a designer and has done it professionally for twenty years, I have a wee axe to grind about the notion that anyone can do it. But that’s not my point. Rather, I wonder if by abdicating responsibility for the ultimate look and feel of the product, as this advertising suggests, the stature of such a cool lifestyle brand (one which is all about stylish design) risks being diminished. It’s a bit like the lazy space-filling journalism which invites us to “have your say – you’re the critic”. No, you’re the critic, that’s why I buy your newspaper! And isn’t such an approach potentially going to result in lots of Fiat 500’s bedecked in “more stickers than you can shake a stick at” – hardly a look which will reflect well on the brand, I’m thinking.

A less chancy approach to unlocking consumers’ latent creativity is seen in initiatives such as Green & Black’s approach, where an online competition to create art out of the new packaging (rather than to change the packaging itself) allows the brand to have the best of both worlds.

One thing that’s really surprising in the Fiat ad – the fact that it has “the lowest average CO2 emissions in Europe” is relegated to what looks like the legal small print. Talk about style over substance.