Fiat’s Journey Through the Past Shows the Power of Detail

Fiat is celebrating its 50th anniversary in Brazil this year, and to mark the occasion, it has produced one of the most detailed and meticulously crafted car ads we’ve ever seen. The ad is a journey through five decades of Brazilian history and Fiat’s history in Brazil. We see events like the millennium celebrations and the 2016 Olympics through the eyes of young children looking out the window of a Fiat, from the original Fiat 147 to the modern Fiat Pulse.

The ad, created by Leo, Fiat’s longtime agency, stands out for its extraordinary attention to detail. The directors not only sourced nearly 40 vintage cars from collectors, but also used vintage camera and film equipment to create imagery that truly looked like it came from each era. Everything, from the costumes of each period (worn by hundreds of extras) to the buildings and streets, is faithful to reality; most of the ad takes place in Belo Horizonte, near Fiat’s first Brazilian factory.

Advertising history is full of technically flawless commercials that vanish from memory within a few weeks. Just as it’s also full of cheap, raw pieces that no one forgets. If money explained effectiveness, you could just spend more to guarantee results, right? But every marketer knows that isn’t true.

This is a commercial that takes cultural references and authenticity to an unusual level, and that shows up in the Test Your Ad Pro diagnostics for the car owner sample we used. It’s an unusual ad that scores above the norm on all of our Showmanship elements: it builds characters, sets a scene, tells a story with a beginning, middle and end, and lets the brand in through emotion, not argument.

That includes “set in the past” and “set in a specific place,” with “nostalgia” emerging as the ad’s top key association. And the leading type of happiness the ad generates is “awe-inspiring,” further evidence that this recreation of Brazil’s past is creating a sense of joy and enchantment in viewers.

Why do showmanship and nostalgia matter so much to advertisers? Elements like being set in a specific time or place, which we associate with “showmanship,” are also strongly linked to effective brand building. These are elements in an ad that we know engage the right side of people’s brains, helping activate broad attention and build positive memories tied to long-term goals. Ads that put on a show like this one work harder and for longer, and can resonate with broader audiences than more transactional, goal-driven “salesmanship” work.

When this film was tested with a sample of car owners on Test Your Ad Pro, it didn’t just do well. It broke the mold, hitting 5.0 Stars, the metric that predicts long-term brand growth. But Fiat has even more to celebrate. The ad also scores exceptionally on short-term Spike Rating (which predicts sales increases) and on Brand Fluency (fast brand recognition) within this target audience.

Three metrics. Three different time horizons. One single piece of advertising hitting all three at once.

In the Triple Opportunity of Attention, we cross real attention data (not stated attention) with System1’s Star Rating and media investment, and this shows that emotionally strong creative, run in high attention environments, with adequate investment, multiplies returns non-linearly. These aren’t three factors that add up. They’re three factors that multiply.

That broad, “out-of-market” audience that a film like Fiat’s manages to capture, nobody watches that commercial because they’re thinking about trading in their car next week. People liked it because it’s about childhood, about Brazil, about collective memory. And it’s precisely by sweeping in this broad audience that the brand plants the mental availability that, according to the Double Jeopardy study, is the true engine of future growth.