How Leo Burnett Dunked Fiat’s CEO into a Vat of Orange Paint
It all began with a feeling. Olivier Francois, Fiat’s CEO came to his creative agency, Leo Burnett Italy with something to say: “I don’t want to make any more grey cars.” It was a bold decision for the company. And also one that would end in him personally being submerged into 10,000 litres of orange paint while sitting in a Fiat 600e.
Francesco Martini, executive creative director remembers this clear message being delivered. Olivier, who is also chief marketing officer for the Stellantis group that contains Fiat, said he felt this decision was the right one for the Fiat brand, but left it to Leo Burnett Italy to turn that thought into a marketing campaign. He wanted them to tell him why it was the right decision. And, Francesco says, he wanted “an exceptional execution” to announce the news, otherwise the grey cars would continue. “This was the deal between him and us. And this is the beginning of the story,” says Francesco.
What followed was an agonising few months of working out how to get to the memorable advertising moment this decision deserved, involving Olivier himself. “That idea came after a long time, to be honest,” says Francesco. “At the very beginning, we were thinking about, I would say, a classic campaign.” They wrote the usual sorts of commercials to convey the message. They played with a PR approach. “They didn't work. We struggled with that because, at a certain point after months of working, we didn't find the idea that made us feel we have the right one.”
They soon landed on colour. “We started asking ourselves why stopping making grey cars is the right decision for this brand," says Francesco. "Because this brand is about Italy and Italy is about colours. These are the steps. It's very logical. The colourful aspect of the work was always crucial to every creative approach that we thought of.
“But that was not enough. We knew that we had to talk about colours and Italy and the colourful side of our country, but still, it's not so easy to arrive at the final idea.”
Italy and Italian-ness was also part of many of the agency’s early ideas. At one point they were toying with the idea of a collaborative campaign with the Italian government to advertise both Italy and Fiat together. “To make a statement on our country and on the other side make a statement on our brand,” says Francesco. “We wanted to make a connection and to create an identity between Fiat and Italy. Fiat is this new positioning with which is 'La Dolce Vita for All.' It means Italian lifestyle, made of little everyday pleasures that everybody can afford. So the link with Italy is crucial. Otherwise you cannot promise la dolce vita.”
At some point, these swirling thoughts started to converge on what would become the ‘No Grey’ spectacular stunt. Looking at other advertising they admired helped. “We started to think about the best ideas that we have in mind as creatives.” The widely beloved ‘Epic Stunt’ for Volvo Trucks sparked inspiration. “We were thinking about making a stunt, something really bold, spectacular, entertaining.” but what Fiat wanted to do was slightly different. “Usually when big brands like Volvo made stunts, they made stunts starting from product features,” says Francesco. “In that case, it was about the stability of the vehicles. Our case was completely different because we made a stunt about a brand statement. It's not about saying that the car is fast or powerful. It's just about the brand.”
Once the idea of a stunt was in the mix, Olivier came back to the centre of the process he had set in motion. “When we said we have to do something PR driven, something really exceptional, really spectacular, that was the moment in which we also started to think about Olivier's presence in an idea. You don't always plan everything. At a certain point, you need the idea. And the idea came out. But the presence of Olivier was something that came up at the end of the process, not at the beginning.”
Then it all came together. To announce Fiat’s goodbye to grey cars, Olivier Francois would be sat in a new Fiat 600e, lifted 15 metres high in the colourful village of Lerici in Liguria. The car would then slowly be lowered into a huge canister full of orange paint. The original grey would disappear and the orange car would emerge, with the CEO still inside. He’d roll down the window and the super would read ‘From June, Fiat will no longer produce grey cars’.
Francesco’s team had presented several ideas to the Fiat CEO over the months they were working on the campaign and got a mixed reception. But when he saw this idea, he was sold. “When he saw that idea, he said 'OK', after one second and he never went back,” says Francesco. “He really loved the idea and he was really happy to be the protagonist of it because he felt that it was necessary that it was him. Who could we put in it instead of him?”
In fact, having the CEO star in the film meant his buy-in was all the more intense. “We could only make the stunt work in terms of the production approach because he really believed in the idea,” says Francesco. “At a certain point in the production pitch, it was tough to find the solution, not just to make the idea real, but also to ensure Olivier's safety. It is not something that you can be light hearted about. It was also tough for the production companies to find the right solution to make the idea really powerful and on the other side to make Olivier safe. He [Olivier] asked the production company to make an extra effort to find the right solution and the budget also increased by more than he thought at the beginning. It was just because he really believed.”
Drowning your client into a vat of paint may be a fantasy for some in advertising, but for everyone involved in Fiat - ‘No Grey’, it was the main risk to be avoided. “We all feared that moment, that day,” says Francesco. “We did a lot of rehearsals in the weeks and days before, just to be really, really sure.” Nobody scrimped on safety. For example, the crane the team used could support the weight of 10 cars, when it would only need to support one.
“I've been on a lot of shoots, especially car shoots, but this was completely different from any other,” says Francesco. “It looked more like a Hollywood movie set or something like that, because it was all about technical problems and big things like the huge crane, the huge tank of paint, thousands of litres of paint. Everything was huge.”
Then there was the ideal location of the stunt – Lerici in Liguria “It's very beautiful,” agrees Francesco. “My suggestion was to go there on holiday. If we make people curious about Italy this is the effect that we wanted to have. This is what the brand wants. If you love Italy, you love Fiat. If you love Fiat, you love Italy. It's something that works in both directions. When you buy a Fiat, you don't just buy a car. Because Fiat is not about performance. It's about the kind of experience that you can live inside the car. It's like a pairing between wine and food.”
It’s big and strategic, but it’s also a lot of fun. “What I like in this idea is that there is a humour inside it,” says Francesco. “There is something ironic. To put a CEO inside 10,000 litres of paint is funny.” It’s also quite brave. “That to me is the one word that best describes the idea,” he says. “It's something that shows the bravery of the client, deciding not to make grey cars anymore. That is step number one. Step number two is the execution, which is brave in itself, because it's something that we'd never done, and probably you have never seen. And the third thing is the statement that we made inside the ad. We not only talk about ourselves, but we also talk about other brands. The CEO also says we don't want to be like Japanese, French, or German cars. It is not always that a brand is brave enough to say ‘we don't want to be like others.’”
The ad industry didn’t take long to recognise the brilliance of this piece of work, taking to social media to applaud it. “We did everything to be memorable, to be really bold and disruptive. And we thought that the idea was like that. But when we saw the kind of reaction, it was surprising in any case. You know you have studied everything to have that effect, but when the effect comes, you are not prepared,” says Francesco.
“I have to be honest, it [the reaction] was bigger than I thought. Especially from advertising people. We have been working hard on this project. So, when you come to the end, you don't know if people will like it, and especially creatives like us. You are full of doubts. So the reaction that we saw was much bigger and better than we expected.”
Leo Burnett Italy is the international hub for Stellantis brands – not only Fiat but also Jeep and Alfa Romeo. This campaign could be the beginning of something way more significant for the agency. “The problems, the issues, change every day and you never know what will come tomorrow, so it's very difficult to say what will happen in the future,” says Francesco. “What I know for sure is that the client was more surprised than us. It was the first time that they did something like this - really PR driven. They're asking themselves why it was so successful.
“I already asked Olivier to do another one and then another one and then another one. And I will try to do anything as the executive creative director of the agency to make another one even bolder if we can. It's like a door that has opened. Now we have opened it,we will try to go in that direction and to do something even better if we can. We will try it for sure. But let's see.
“It's not easy to find an exceptional execution, but also combined with an exceptional idea in terms of brand strategy. Many times you have an exceptional creative idea, but then on the brand side you are not so bold. So if we want to make an episode two, we need to be strong in both directions.”
