No more grey cars?

Fiat has just announced they will stop producing grey cars. In a literal way.

The move is quite interesting as it can be read in two ways simultaneously:

Differentiation is everything. Getting bold and renouncing to product what is probably a good half of the demand from your customer in any market can have a lot of value. For the price of pissing off a few of them forever, you have the opportunity to embark on the rest of them in choices that they will love and remember you for. If you win, you end up adding tremendous goodwill to your brand value. (Remember the first bubbly color iMac lineup.)

Your only differentiation is color, though? On the other hand, what does it say about incumbent car makers if they can only change anecdotal surface parameters of their offer? If you can only play with the dreadful 5Ps (product, price, promotion, placement, packaging), it's a strong signal that you are cornered as a commodity without any added value.

Meanwhile, Tesla has won the network war for charging stations.

Tesla is not a car company

I’ve been saying that Tesla is not a car company for many years. The car is admittedly an essential moving piece (pun intended) of their business, but it’s only the product. Tesla is, first and foremost, an energy company monetized with high-end electric cars. Their crucial differentiator from Mer…

Philippe MEDAinnovation copilots