Lancia: Moving Emotions

This morning I was looking, as I love to do, for automotive news, when I came across a lovely case that I'd like to talk about with you all because, in my opinion, is a very interesting marketing action.

First of all, let's describe what I'm talking about:
MOVINGEMOTIONS (project developed by Bitmama), an online travel's configurator developed by the partnership between Lancia and ViaMichelin to promote the new Voyager, that allows to plan a personal week end in 4 easy steps:

1. WHERE? first of all you have to specify where are you planning to start from;
2. WHEN? the second step is to decide when do you want to leave;
3. WHO? thirdly, you can choose to go with your friends or with your family. And....how many passengers?
4. WHAT? concluding, you have to decide what you'd like to do. 

The result of those 4 steps will be a very complete travel suggestion: the site will show you the proposed destination, a road map with direction to reach it, tips about hotels (with address and contacts) and other useful things.

Not convinced? Of course, you have the possibility to see another destination or to restart the configuration!

The most interesting thing, in the interest of this blog, is that this site will show you even the Voyager's characteristics that better can help you depending on the travel kind that you have selected (art and culture, food or nature and outdoor): to take an example, if you love outdoor activities, "Voyager has everything you need: Stow'n Go ® system, to accommodate even the bulkiest equipment, roof fitted as standard, longitudinal and transverse bars........etc.".

This last note is the one that leads us to consider specific marketing and communication themes.

We are talking about a partnership: this kind of arrangement is focussed on relation and values exchange in order to generate engagement, faith and a strong alliance between the partners.

To get straight to the point, when you are about to develop a partnership with another firm, coherence is the most important thing to looking for, because it will represent the pivot around which we could develop economic, social and competitive value in a long term prospective. 

In today's case, we can find:

• a strong values' concordance between a travel company and the kind of promoted car (a MPV): who's interested in buying a spacious car is probably interested in journeys; 
• a trip is a very emotional activity, but it's normally meticulously planned, especially in a crisis period: the idea of being entrusted to a trip's configurator brings a new kind of though, which is able to increase the emotional level (it's named 'Moving Emotions'). Of course, this can help to build the new product image (which will contribute to create the product identity in a long period horizon), that is trying to be more characterized (starting from the name) than the model before (Lancia Phedra): do not forget, every single detail we are talking about is going to affect the whole brand equity;
• still talking about product identity, Lancia Voyager is a faithful traveling companion, that could drive you everywhere that you want, and this is functional to the concept of brand loyalty: Lancia's consumer feel protected and pampered by a fair friend;
• a general attention to assistance: "not satisfied by the proposed trip? Never mind, we're here with other suggestions.". In the same way, Lancia's trying to make consumers "relaxed", because they are present for them for the whole car's life. Such as they're saying "have a problem with your Voyager? Here we are"; 
• this philosophy is reflected even in the configurator's design: at the left of the screen, you can find a pop-up window where is possible to find informations about how the site works (remember the assistance), statistics regarding other consumer's preferences (this is important to make everyone feels to belong to a big family - Lancia), and a section where you can book a test drive or find a dealer.

In conclusion, this partnership between Lancia and ViaMichelin seems to be a strong arrangement, thanks to the coherence created to generate the values that we have talked about.

Without doubts, this kind of action is part of a corporate strategy that is aimed to build a long lasting product identity in order to positive affect the brand equity: too often, Lancia's identity has been negative influenced, and nowadays the Italian brand has lost its sixties' strong and sophisticated image. In the last years they are trying to get it back to the old splendor. 

Will it be the right way?