'Let's see, eggs,
bread, milk, an Alfa . . .'
How do you illustrate that your car is inexpensive?
By Toni Fitzgerald
Jan 15, 2010
You're at the shopping mall, dashing off a few post-Christmas errands on your lunch break, when suddenly you stop and stare at a sight that seems to defy all laws of physics.
It's a shopping cart, one you'd see at the grocery store, and in the cart are a half-dozen bags filled with staples like bread, fruit and paper towels.
Balanced on top of those is a car.
This is not a model car or a toy car but an actual vehicle, and it's huge, nearly 13.5 feet long and weighs more than 2,000 pounds.
You can't help but wonder how the heck someone got it in the shopping cart and why it isn't toppling over.
The whole thing is a stunt, of course, and a very eye-catching one from an agency in Belgium. The shopping cart car made its debut this week, tying into this week's biennial European Motor Show Brussels, which can account for up to 70 percent of a brand's full-year sales.
In addition to potential buyers, hundreds of car salesmen are gathered in the city this week for the show, and Alfa Romeo Belgium, which manufactures sporty vehicles, wanted to get their attention.
"Alfa Romeo Belgium, being a courageous and non-conformist brand, briefed us to do something that would dominate word of mouth rather than paid media," says Geoffrey Hantson, creative director at Duval Guillaume, Antwerp. "Which is fortunate, because their budget is much smaller than most of their competitors."
In brainstorming ideas, the agency kept coming back to the car's low price compared to its competitors.
"So we decided to show literally how easy it is to buy an Alfa Romeo when the price is so incredibly reduced," Hantson says.
The message: Puchasing an Alfa Romeo really is as simple as tossing it into a shopping cart, just like bread or a dozen eggs.
If the idea was simple, the execution was not. Despite what you might expect, there are no cables holding up the car from the ceiling. The car is actually balanced on a pole. The cart was then constructed around it, hiding the pole.
The engine in the car, a MiTo model, was removed to make it a bit lighter. But otherwise, it's a real vehicle.
"You can imagine that in this case all the necessary respect is going to the engineers and production team who made this possible," Hantson says.
The car cart made its first stop on Tuesday at a shopping mall in Brussels. Next week, after the auto show, it will move to a mall in Antwerp, followed by one in Liege.
The stunt works at two levels. It's a smart visual that conveys one concept very well, which is just how easy it is to buy an Alfa Romeo.
It's also a true engineering marvel. People have been walking around the cart, trying to figure out why the car doesn't topple over.
Then they take pictures of it with their cell phone to show their friends or post online, giving the stunt a second life on the web.
Notes Hantson, though it's early in the campaign, "since you are already asking questions at the other side of the Atlantic, I guess things are going well."
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