The
under-fire celebrity endorsement of the Fiat 500 in the
United States by Jennifer Lopez has become embroiled in
even more controversy this week, after it was revealed
that a TV commercial supposedly featuring the singer
driving through the Bronx and recalling memories was
actually a faked scene.
Titled ‘My World’, the
advert was “voiced-over by Lopez, who is seen driving a
Fiat 500 Cabrio as she travels through the streets of
Manhattan to the Bronx where she grew up,” according to
a statement by Fiat North America when it was released
on October 10th. According to the statement, “the new ad
explores her personal take on how life in the New York
City borough continues to inspire her to be tougher, to
stay sharper and to think faster.”
Except it now appears
that wasn’t actually the truth. According to muck-raking
website The Smoking Gun, which broke the story
this week, the driver was in fact a ‘body double’, while
footage featuring Lopez was filmed in Los Angeles and
later inserted into the 60-second advert. The Smoking
Gun noted the role of ‘Jenny from the Block’ was
played by a body double, according to two sources
familiar with the commercial production. While the Lopez
lookalike was actually behind the wheel in the Bronx,
Lopez herself was in Los Angeles, where she was filmed
inside a Fiat 500. The shots of the actress were
artfully merged to make it appear that she was tooling
around New York City’s poorest borough. Big Block, a Los
Angeles digital production studio, “was hired to merge
live action footage with computer-generated imagery to
make it appear as if Lopez was in the Bronx.”
Chrysler Group
marketing boss Olivier François also went along with the
ploy, which fooled all the national media outlets. “The
primary objective of ‘My World’ was to explore the story
of Jennifer Lopez, who is a cultural icon. We watch as
she leaves Manhattan and makes her way back to the
Bronx, where she grew up and continues to be inspired
by,” François said in a statement released at the time,
which also turns out not to have been the case.
The advert itself,
which sees Lopez travelling from Manhattan to the Bronx,
is packed full of time-honoured clichés and the usual
traditional ‘ghetto’ imagery - graffiti artists at work
on shuttered shop fronts, a man playing drums on
upturned containers, break dancers and a barber’s shop
scene, culminating in children playing around a fire
hydrant and chasing after the 500 that Lopez is
purported to be driving. “This is my world. This place
inspires me,” Lopez claims in the voiceover, a voiceover
that it turns out was actually recorded in Los Angeles.
The clichés keep rolling as she adds: “They may be just
streets to you, but to me, they’re a playground.” The
advert has been an attempt by Chrysler to recreate its
only commercial success so far, the ‘Born of Fire’ spot,
which was centred around the attributes of the city of
Detroit.
In a statement issued
yesterday, Chrysler Group grudgingly admitted the advert
had been faked. “Both commercials featuring Jennifer
Lopez were indeed filmed in the Bronx as well as outside
locations,” said Chrysler spokesperson Diane Gutierrez
in a statement. “As you may know, in today’s world,
people are increasingly mobile and their work takes them
to a variety of locations. As a result, we took the
opportunity to film wherever Ms Lopez was working at the
time to accommodate her schedule,” she added.
The
multi-million-dollar association between Lopez and the
Fiat 500 has backfired right from the moment it kicked
off, although in fairness to this values and attributes
mismatch, the 500’s sales had stalled even before the
new campaign got underway. Criticising Fiat’s mismanaged
U.S. relaunch has now become a past-time within the
blogosphere, with the media effectively declaring ‘open
season’ on the struggling relaunch. The biggest
challenge for the marketing of the 500 from this
celebrity association appears to be the adverts
(released so far), which are focused on Lopez herself
and on promoting her latest music releases, while the
supermini is pushed into the background.
Moreover, the story of
the faked Bronx advert contains a final embarrassing
sting in the tail, as it seems that the 500 used during
filming broke down during the shoot. According to The
Smoking Gun in an update, the breakdown was captured
by journalist Ed Morales: “The Fiat came to a halt
during filming in September on East 136th Street in Mott
Haven. While two men tinkered with the engine, the J. Lo
stand-in sat patiently at the wheel, her face obscured
by honey-colored hair styled just like Lopez’s.”
However, there has
been one bit of good marketing news for Fiat North
America this week, as its first 60-second social media
spot promoting the newly-launched Fiat 500 Abarth has
racked up more than one million YouTube viewers in just
one week. The digital spot, titled ‘Seduction’, made its
debut at the Los Angeles Auto Show in front of hundreds
of journalists, and was then posted to the Fiat brand’s
YouTube site. Without having ever been aired on
television or cable networks, it rapidly spread through
the web and gained global attention. It represents the
characteristics of the 500 Abarth as a sensual and
striking model and takes a peek at what happens the
first time a customer encounters the race-ready vehicle.
The spot ends with the message, “The Fiat 500 Abarth.
You’ll never forget the first time you see one.”
ItaliaspeedTV:
"My World" - Fiat 500 TV Advert
featuring Jennifer Lopez
