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Fiat Automóveis
has launched an ambitious project in Brazil this month that
is using the latest ideas in social media to develop a
project that is entirely the result of consumer input and
ideas and that will be turned into a concept car to be
presented at the 26th Salão do Automóvel de São Paulo in
just over a year's time. A website was launched live at the
beginning of the month that invites visitors to come up with
ideas of how they would want a car, dubbed the Fiat Mio, to
be like under the line: "In the future we're building, what
should a car have that makes it mine, while still working
for others?"
The fiatmio.cc
website, designed on the lines of a typical social
networking site, has been developed in conjunction with São
Paulo based AgenciaClick. "We're inviting Brazilian consumers to
invent the concept car that Fiat will exhibit in the Salão
do Automóvel, São Paulo's auto show, in October 2010,"
comments
Abel Reis, AgenciaClick's president and chief operating
officer. The whole project was handed by Fiat to its
Brazilian arm as the Latin American nation is the Italian
carmaker's second largest new vehicle market globally and it
is a country where car ownership is on the rapid rise. Add
in what Fiat sees as a sophisticated and technically savvy
customer base and the ingredients to realise the Fiat Mio
are in place.
The Fiat Mio
project is a combination of ideas, says Fiat Automóveis: "Your ideas combined with our will to realise them will
create a new way of thinking the future of motor vehicles. In order to understand Mio, we rescued the thinking of a
great Italian, like Fiat, namely Michelangelo. The sculpture
master believed that by just simply lapidating and chipping
away the rough material one would find a great work of art
in any stone block. This is Fiat’s intention. Fiat Mio is a
participative project that combines the ideas of future cars
to create a huge block. This block will serve as raw
materials from which to extract a great project for the
future generations."
The bold
ambition of the plan is to make the Mio the first car ever
completely made in "Creative Commons" which are licenses
that enable standardisation of free content creation and
distribution. Unlike copyright, they facilitate content
sharing among users. The Fiat Mio project will make use of
these licenses to add and disseminate the ideas that
consumers send to fiatmio.cc. It is through them, working in
conjunction with Fiat Automóveis' engineering and style
teams, that it will produce this new concept car, the first
in the world created by and for users. Fiat also says that
it believes that the information generated in this project
should be shared without restrictions for use by simple
users or engineers and manufacturers, and other vehicle
manufacturers. The dedicated URL address is also meant to
point towards the project's DNA, fiatmio.cc is
Creative Commons, fiatmio.cc is Collaborative Car,
fiatmio.cc is Concept Car, fiatmio is Consumer Car.
In addition to
thinking out the future with its consumers, Fiat are
committed to realising the results. The ideas from users
will be combined wand tested and made viable with the
proposals of its own engineers. The final result
will be the Fiat Concept Car III (FCC III), Fiat’s newest
concept car to be presented at the 26th Salão do Automóvel
de São Paulo in October next year. And after just two weeks
of the website going live the results have been impressive
with 67,000 visitors submitting 1,700 ideas (almost all say
Fiat are highly realistic proposals) and more than 40,000
comments being posted on a Twitter feed that is embedded
into the website.
The origins of
the project date back three years to 2006 when Fiat
celebrated its 30th anniversary in Brazil. Instead of
remembering its 30-year presence in Brazil, Fiat decided to
celebrate its presence in
the country by inviting people to devise the future with the
campaign “Fiat 30 years, inviting you to devise the future”,
with children and youths as its major players, revealing
their visions of the new era. People had the chance to participate in an interactive
experience on the internet in which an exercise indicated
the expectations of internet users of different regions,
ages and social classes for the next 30 years. On the
dedicated microsite http://www.fiat30anos.com.br, thousands of Brazilians
left their expectations of the future (on video, audio or
text) and talked about the world in which they live.
In continuation of this process, in the same year Fiat
presented its first 100 percent Brazilian creation during the
24th Salão do Automóvel de São Paulo, the Fiat Concept Car I (FCCI),
an Adventure-inspired coupé developed by Fiat Brazil’s Style
Centre. The studies continued from there but with a new focus:
to create
an environmentally-friendly and fun concept vehicle, that is an ecologically
correct car that gave pleasure in driving it. The result was
the Fiat Concept Car II (FCC II), a concept car presented
during the 25th edition of the Salão do Automóvel de São
Paulo last autumn. Developed in the Giovanni Agnelli Development
Centre in
Betim, MG (State of Minas Gerais), the FCC II is more than
just a concept car. It was built with highly correct and
ecological components. It is a research laboratory in search of new
technologies based on the adoption of new mobility solutions
with alternate, reusable and pollution-free materials.
After these two
successful projects, Fiat Automóveis continue to research
and develop new technologies as well as continuing to
connect to the trends and behaviour of consumers in order to
achieve a closer and better relationship with those who
patronise the brand. It is for this reason that Fiat
Automóveis wishes to work with consumers' ideas as well and
so the Fiat
Mio project originated.
Fiat Automóveis
adds: "We know that the environmental responsibility of a car
manufacturer should not end when the vehicle leaves the
assembly line. It extended to our relationship with
consumers, the environment of cities, and their mobility. It
is from this point that Fiat wishes to find solutions that
contribute to the protection of the environment and better
quality of life for all. We must think of the future in a collective and
participative form. Fiat therefore assumes the commitment to
continue the Fiat Mio project, converting your ideas into
reality. They may be simple or complex, it doesn’t matter.
Everyone has an idea of how the future should be, or what to
do to make it better. It is therefore essential that you
participate in this more than democratic forum. Let’s combine your ideas with our capacity to produce
them. We wish to create a new project with you, a new car, a
new form of transport for the next generations."
Fiat Automóveis
will analyse all the initial ideas and suggestions submitted
to the website over the last four weeks and next month it
will announce the concept car's market positioning, based on
the data collected, which will in turn allow visitors to the
website to start offering more technical information as the
project really starts to gather steam. Next year Fiat
Automóveis will invite users ideas in areas such as
marketing and advertising. Fiat is also involving
universities and engineering establishments in the project
and eventually the input of the Fiat Group globally will
start to come into the equation.
"It may not be a commercial car, but it might be a map
for the future," Reis adds. "It's a map for the desires
of consumers." Although unlikely to be ever be built
commercially Fiat Automóveis hopes that this project will
throw up innovative and practical ideas and technologies
that can be incorporated into future models across the
globe. "We can bring the features to other cars there are small things that don't cost much and bring
great satisfaction to consumers, but haven't been given much
attention; a lot of their ideas will end up going into our cars,"
comments Fiat Automóveis Marketing Director, Joao Ciaco.
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