Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Fiat's failure

Yesterday, AutoBlog.com reported that Fiat has sold only about 30% of the new 500s they had planned to sell this year after investing millions each to build a stand-alone Fiat dealership.

Oops.

Not having a strategy is expensive.

Not having a clue is disastrous.

This kind of failure goes way beyond bad advertising. After all, if bad advertising was all it took to kill a product, we wouldn't have Mentos, AT&T, or Velveeta.

The real question here is what led Fiat to believe that the 500 would be a success in America in the first place? Was there a need in the market for an Italian Mini? Does it offer anything substantially different or better than what's currently on the market?

Cool, competent and interesting isn't enough in a competitive market. It has to be better.