NF500 / fiat website

Last week Fiat UK launched their new website and online car configurator.

Produced in partnership with AKQA, Fiat claim their new website is revolutionising the online automotive experience.

Epitomising the ‘Fiat digital’ spirit, www.fiat.co.uk features a unique interactive design and online world firsts. Developed to dramatically transform the Fiat buying and ownership experience, the site aims to makes it easier to choose, configure and finance a new Fiat. At the same time, it opens up a new channel of communication between Fiat and its customers.

Fiat’s digital platform will be an instrumental part of the Italian car manufacturer’s objective to increase car sales in the UK to 100,000 units by 2010, once its full range, including the new Fiat 500, is in place. The launch of the new website coincided with the introduction of the company’s new mid-size five door hatchback, the new Fiat Bravo.

The new Fiat website takes its inspiration from the brand’s heritage of design and innovation. At the heart of the site is a dramatic 3D showroom that pays homage to Fiat’s world-famous Lingotto building – renowned by architects and industrialists as a feat of remarkable engineering. The showroom displays the company’s range of models available in the UK to emphasise that stylish design is a quality that is shared by them all.

Built entirely for broadband, the site features full-screen 360° images of the interiors and exteriors of the cars, combined with a tailored voiceover to give potential customers an audio-visual tour of every model.

In an automotive online first, www.fiat.co.uk gives visitors real-time contact with Fiat Customer Services. For the first time ever, customers can book and confirm a test drive, request maps for directions and model brochures, in real-time. The test drive booking is then qualified by a real-life customer services representative, rather than by just a confirmation email.

Managing Director of Fiat Group Automobiles UK Ltd, Giulio Salomone, says:

The launch of the innovative fiat.co.uk represents the first step in our Fiat digital journey. Our strategy is to embrace the latest technology to create an environment that is captivating, innovative, and customer-focused. Every aspect of the website has been designed to make the experience a pleasure for the user and to immerse them in the Fiat brand.

Ajaz Ahmed, Chairman of AKQA says:

Fiat’s spirit of pioneering innovation and fun enabled us to take a fresh approach to many of the challenges that often compromise automotive sites. The result is a fun digital experience that combines a number of world firsts, is visually stunning, user friendly, and unlike anything else.

Not much there for the Fiat 500 yet, but the tease (shown above) at least reveals the UK launch date of the new baby Fiat.

Every year, over 5,500 babies are born prematurely in Italy: babies that need special care in neonatology wards and neonatal intensive care units just to stay alive.

To mark the launch of the new 500, and to give these babies and their parents fresh hope, Fiat has teamed up with the nonprofit Albero della Vita Foundation in the latter’s project entitled “Un nido per Pollicino – Helping the little ones grow big”.

The initiative, whose promoter and scientific coordinator is Dr. Daniele Farina – chief of neonatology at the Sant’Anna hospital in Torino – is raising funds for building and improving neonatology and neonatal intensive care facilities in seven Italian hospitals, as well as for providing psychological support services for parents.

Donations can be made in Italy by sending a text message to the number 48586 from June 30 to July 15, 2007, or by direct deposit to Intesa Sanpaolo bank account 100050 (routing number: CAB 09400, ABI 03069) or postal account 32474264, indicating “Un nido per Pollicino” in the space provided for specifying the reason for the transaction.

Donations can also be made online by accessing the Fiat 500 website, the Fiat website and the Foundation’s website.

The funds raised by the project will be distributed to seven Italian hospitals, each with a strong local tradition in its own area: Torino’s Sant’Anna, Mangiagalli in Milano, Careggi in Florence, Gemelli in Rome, Monaldi in Naples, the Policlinico of Bari, and the Azienda Universitaria Policlinico in Palermo. In addition to these hospitals, the ZeroTre foundling home in Milano will also receive funding.

We decided to support this project because it’s very much in line with the values of the 500, a car that looks to the future, that transmits joy and hope, that can bring a smile to every face. Because that’s how we think of the 500: a little car with a big heart. And we’re very pleased to be able to put this extraordinary power at the service of an initiative as deserving as this.

Explains Luca De Meo, Fiat Automobiles CEO.

We’re proud that an enterprise as important to the entire country as Fiat has chosen us as a partner.

Announced Patrizio Paoletti, chairman of L’Albero della Vita Foundation, an independent humanitarian organization that has been working to protect and safeguard the rights of children and teenagers for over ten years;

The project fits right in with our goals: helping a child today to make an adult happy tomorrow. An important part of our daily work is building consensus and attracting resources that we can redistribute to help satisfy the primary needs of modern society, which are first and foremost the needs of children.

“Un nido per Pollicino” will be assisted by a radio campaign with appeals to the public’s generosity by some of Italy’s most popular entertainers, who have agreed to donate their time – and their voices – to the charitable initiative.