2014 Silver Automotive

Isobar

'Hello Goodbye'

Client Auto Trader

How did the campaign make a difference? With January being a key month in the motoring calendar, it was important for Auto Trader to maintain its market share whilst reaffirming its market leader position against a growing and ever-aggressive competitor set.

With a campaign to make the challenge of finding the right car seem as easy as saying ‘Hello, Goodbye’, Auto Trader grew their consumer awareness and achieved market dominance in January with 49% share of all Automotive-Classifieds visits.

Strategy As consumer optimism started to grow again, Auto Trader anticipated a rise in the number of people looking to sell their old cars and upgrade to a better one as people looked to improve their lifestyles in January 2014.

The strategy identified and sought to diffuse the tension point that existed in the process: when it comes to buying big-ticket items, consumers expect the process to be easy and painless but often find it complicated and stressful.

Customers don’t want to go from site to site, searching for the right car – they wanted to be able to buy and sell with ease. With more cars than anywhere else and the ability to search from anywhere (desktop, mobile, tablet), Auto Trader are best positioned to make buying your next car effortless – and to say that making a change never felt so good.

Creativity The creative approach focused on getting people excited about finding their next car. Whilst January advert breaks are dominated by functional sales messages, the brand wanted to create something emotive that would cut through and inspire consumers to visit Auto Trader.

Illustrating the simplicity of saying ‘Hello, Goodbye’, the core TV ad showed people leaping from car to car to in a choreographed manner, energetically demonstrating how quick and easy buying and selling is with Auto Trader. An interactive microsite allowed consumers to enter their car’s registration plate for a free valuation and to tell Auto Trader what car they wanted to say hello to. The site demonstrated the amount of choice available on Auto Trader and began to inspire consumers to upgrade. Consumers were encouraged to #sayhello to their next car on social media, which translated the creative idea into conversation online.

Results The first part of the campaign launched on 26th December, ensuring that it began to build up desire in the lead up to Auto Trader’s peak period in Q1.

As the campaign rolled into the New Year, momentum began to build and started to generate very positive results. By using an understanding of the macro trends and consumer motivations the campaign was able to use a simple and compelling message to help Auto Trader say ‘hello’ to new customers and ‘goodbye’ to the competition.

Team Nick Bailey - CEO, Blake Cuthbert - Business Director, Daniel William - Program Director, Simon Clancy - Creative Director, Dani Brown - Creative, Darren Giles - Creative Director, James Leigh - Creative Director, Mark Light - Designer, Sabina Begum - Designer, Shib Hussain - Senior Strategist