Fuel-saving eco:Drive wins French Grand Prix

eco:Drive, Fiat’s clean, green in-car technology, has won another accolade – this time a top honour at the most prestigious advertising awards in the world.

The Cannes Lions Awards take place over an entire week in the South of France and reward creativity across all of the marketing channels. This year, there were 22,652 entries from 86 countries around the world.

eco:Drive was categorised in Interactive Tools. From the short-listed finalists, a select few are awarded gold, silver or bronze awards, and for the outstanding entries a Grand Prix is presented. Of the 2,205 short-listed entries for a Cannes Cyber Lions Award, just three received a coveted Grand Prix, including eco:Drive.

“Even though eco:Drive is only for Fiat users, we wanted to spread its strong ecological messages as widely as possible,” says Elena Bernardelli, marketing director, Fiat Group Automobiles UK. “This great award is testimony to our success in achieving that.

“I’m also delighted that this prestigious advertising festival should recognise eco:Drive as a new product that has established a relationship with customers, rather than simply a form of advertising.”

Launched in 2008 by Fiat in conjunction with digital agency AKQA, eco:Drive is a free to use tool that helps motorists to understand the impact of their driving style on fuel consumption and exhaust emissions.

Using a USB memory stick plugged into the car’s Blue&Me port, eco:Drive records information about the vehicle and how it has been driven, which can be regularly uploaded on to a computer. Using this information, the system gives a detailed analysis of the driver’s performance, along with suggestions on how to improve efficiency even further by changing driving habits.

The Grand Prix was one of four awards collected by the Fiat Group at the Cannes Festival – the first time in the event’s history that so many accolades were given to one company. Fiat won two Lions Golds and a Lions Bronze as well as the Grand Prix.