Thousands of homes and small business needed to be rebuilt, ruins had to be removed and vital supplies delivered. This meant people affected by the quakes needed vehicles.

We created FIAT PRO RECONSTRUCTION: a free van sharing service for commercial vehicles that people could use to start reconstructing their lives.

The event was launched in Amatrice. We set up a base camp where people could easily go and rent one of the ten free vans available. The project wasn’t set up to operate for just a weekend, or even just a month: so that we could make a real difference, the project was built to be active for a full year. To generate awareness, we installed a set of outdoor posters near the tents where many are still living today and for those whose homes weren’t destroyed we seeded a door-to-door information sharing campaign headed by the local government.

For maximum effectiveness, the base camp will be moved every 3 months to new area hit by the quake: the print and door-to-door campaign will arrive in advance.

FIAT PRO RECONSTRUCTION was launched on the 21st of April by government authorities and FCA management. Media coverage has been substantial, with earned PR in local and nationwide newspapers, TV broadcast news and a huge word-of-mouth buzz in the local area. In the first two weeks, the service has been at or near full capacity every day, without any paid media investment. We estimate this will mean up to 7,000 families helped during the life of the service, and many more exposed to the campaign.

But the results of the campaign will only be fully realised in the coming months and years. As the project continues, future photos and news reports of the area slowly rebuilding will often feature our Fiat Professional vans doing the hard work of rebuilding central Italy, becoming associated in the minds of viewers all over the world with optimism, hard work and dependability.