Not the cars, their radio campaigns.

Both of them are taking a similar approach – storytelling. But they do it very differently from one another. And if you ask me, they are both so close to doing it right. So close.

There are two elements of broadcast storytelling that make it work for brands – relevance and authenticity.

Subaru is great at relevance. Their radio spots are stories about “scary” Halloweens on icy roads and sharing pie with snowplow drivers at the diner when they should be out plowing the roads. That is why people up north buy Subarus, to conquer the bad weather. That’s why I drive one. But it doesn’t matter, because the stories, whether they are real or not, don’t sound real. They sound scripted and performed by voiceovers.

Fiat, on the other hand, has mastered authenticity with its Alternate Routes series. When you are sitting in the car and you hear the two-minute clips (culled down from longer stories that appear on their Facebook page), you are hooked. You want to know what happens next. So you listen. And if you want to hear more, you’ll find them online. It seems like a brilliant campaign. But I’m not sure how the stories are relevant to Fiat. What is it about parachute jumping or coming face-to-face with a bear that is going to make me want to buy a Fiat? I don’t know. Because the stories aren’t relevant to the product. “Life is best when driven” is a nice tag line, but it’s not enough to tie the stories to the car.

So if you took the truth and transparency of the Fiat campaign and mated it with the relevance of the Subaru campaign, what would you get? I don’t know. Maybe a Chevy?