#zerofollowers
Fiat Group Automobiles Germany AG
Issue 28 | September 2013
Agency
Leo Burnett Frankfurt
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer Andreas Pauli Digital Strategy Director Christoph Riebling Creative Directors Daniela Ewald Jorg Hoffmann Senior Art Director Helge Kniess Senior Copywriter Benjamin Merkel Junior Art Director, Digital Viktor Kislovskij Senior Copywriter, Digital Christian Muller-Horrig Senior Art Director, Digital Christian Puth
Other Credits
Account Supervisor Alessia Bellini Project Management Christiane Simshauser Head of Brand Marketing Communication, Fiat Giuseppe Fiordispina Communication Manager Abarth, Fiat Maren Dragon CRM/E-Business Manager Abarth, Fiat Sascha Weber Abarth Press Officer, Fiat Florian Bungerner
Date
June 2013
Background
The Abarth brand with its distinctive scorpion emblem was rooted in motor racing and high performance. It was founded by racing driver Carlo Abarth, who lived to race and win.
The new Fiat 500 Abarth was a proud continuation of a long line of highly- tuned cars with motorsport in their DNA.
Idea
To promote the speedy Fiat 500 Abarth, the agency created the first Twitter account no-one can follow.
Click on the ‘follow’ button on the car’s official Twitter page and you get a message telling you no-one can follow the car because it’s just too fast.
Its follower count clicks up to 1 briefly after you click but then falls back to zero immediately.
A link led interested drivers to a site where they could book a test drive on one of six racetracks in Germany and Austria.
Results
No Twitter followers.
Our Thoughts
I love it when creative people set out to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. Most brands are obsessed by the number of followers they can get and encourage as many clicks of the ‘like’ button as possible. Now here’s a brand setting out to be deliberately anti-social.
It’s an idea that works as quickly as the best press ads. The moment you get the tagline, “Too fast to follow” there is an immediate ah-ha, an immediate smile and an immediate desire to send the link on to a mate.
We haven’t been told any of the details of the earned media, but you can bet this cheap-as-chips idea has reached millions of people and reinforced The 500 Abarth’s credentials as a little car with a lot of poke.