AutoAds
carsales.com.au
Issue 47 | June 2018
Agency
CHE Proximity
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer Ant White Group Creative Director Glen Dickson Creative Directors Garret Fitzgerald, Joe Hill, Chris Andrews Creatives Cameron Bell and Sam Dickson
Production Team
Head of CHEP Films Julie Duff CHEP Films Producer Elena Szymanski Editing/VFX CHEP Films (Damian Capicchiano & Matt Goddard) Sound post-production CHEP Films (Matt Thompson) Music Loner Studio Technical Director - Product & Comms Matt Rose Technical Director - Web & Platform Hoang Nguyen Creative Technologist Andy Stewart Digital Producer Sam Bury Director Tony Rogers Producers Jason Byrne, Rohan Timlock Line Producer Alex Sturman Cinematographer Marin Johnson
Other Credits
Chief Operating Officer Andrew Drougas Group Account Director Jess Hughes Planning Director James Needham Account Director Sarah Newell
Date
February - April 2018
Background
carsales is Australia’s leading online car classified platform. With more buyers and sellers than any competitor, it provided over 200,000 active car listings.
Whilst carsales’ platform and UX had evolved over 20 years, the way people sold cars hadn’t. They would upload photos, a description and information about their vehicle before it was published to the site. It was a process that hadn’t evolved with marketing or advantages the internet afforded it. It was a process that needed to be updated, one that only carsales could deliver.
Idea
Auto-ads transformed historical online ad listings into personalised car commercials for every seller, giving them a powerful selling tool and a small window of fame. Every Auto-ad was built with a bespoke algorithm that used first party data including the seller’s photos, prices, odometer readings, car models, year, and names. These were stitched together with over 5,000 pre-recorded audio and visual clips. With over 1.2 trillion possible combinations, every listing had its very own unique commercial.
All this without asking the sellers to lift a finger. All they had to do was list their car and then enjoy and share five different commercials for their car, themed around luxury, family, adventure, tough and urban. In the first week, over 597,180 personalised car ads were shared on social media, with the sheer volume breaking Facebooks API.
Some ads were put on TV, with a paid media budget behind them, demonstrating how carsales had created personalisation on an epic scale.
Results
The objective was for carsales to show that even though it was the market leader, it wasn’t resting on its laurels but looking for relevant innovations to help sellers in the used-car category.
597,180 individual car commercials were created and over 119,436 individual customers engaged with the campaign. Average time spent on the site was over four minutes.
5,000 autoads are still being generated each day.
Our Thoughts
So you don’t just get one unique commercial that sells your old banger, you get five. Your name and your own photos are neatly dropped in to clips of Kai Smythe and other bits of video to create ads flogging it as a luxury sedan or the perfect family car or a tough runabout.
The ads are cheesy, fun and, more to the point, unique to the seller. Who wouldn’t want to share them in social media? This is data and technology coming together beautifully around a creative idea.