The Impact Series: Appetite for Disruption with heycar

Heycar is a pioneer in the new and used car market. Bursting onto the scene in 2019, heycar was able to steal valuable market share from rivals like Cazoo and Cinch. Though its competitors had far deeper marketing pockets, vastly outspending heycar by orders of magnitude, the challenger brand raced ahead. 

So how did it do it? 

Our latest webinar in The Impact Series featured heycar’s Head of Marketing, Charlotte Ford, in conversation with Atomic London Managing Director Louise Rudaizky. The pair discussed how their dynamic partnership empowered the team to craft an award-winning strategy with attention-grabbing creative that helped the brand achieve a 10% uplift in brand consideration. 

The full panel included:

Charlotte Ford - Head of Marketing, heycar

Louise Rudaizky - Managing Director, Atomic London

Randell Beckford, Senior Strategist, Atomic London

Katy Sumption, ECD, Atomic London

Here’s what was said. 

“Heycar launched with the intention of making the car buying experience better for consumers,” Charlotte opened. “But our two main rivals, Cinch and Cazoo, spend as much as 9x our media budget, using Premier League footballers and reality TV stars. This was really effective for them. We knew we couldn’t simply outspend - so we wanted to be smarter.”.

Tough rivals - but also a tough market. The car market has been volatile in the last few years, from pre-pandemic to post. There are widespread stock constraints - particularly around semiconductors. Less stock means less cars - and less cars means rising prices. “Challenging a sector as a new brand in these conditions isn’t easy”, Charlotte noted. “We needed to really build a brand and stand out.”. 

Strong brands are extremely important in the automotive industry. Especially when it comes to car buying. The landscape is so fragmented and competitive - consumers have the option to  go to a local dealership or direct to someone on Facebook Marketplace.   

“We needed to find an agency who could be quick, nimble and use the advantages we had to cut-through to consumers and position us as a challenger brand,” Charlotte continued. “And we found Atomic.”. 

Randell Beckford, Senior Strategist at Atomic London picked up. “It was a really exciting brief to receive because it empowered us to set aggressive goals.” Rendell explained how Atomic divided the brief through three lenses.

Subverting category tropes 

Randell spoke to the Atomic research process. “Our conversations with consumers revealed that buying a car can be a really overwhelming journey which is filled with negatives and unknowns. Like, for example, will the car even work!?”. 

Quantitative research validated these quantitative insights - and the Atomic team noticed that competitors were also crafting brands and campaigns which spoke to these pain points. But the team knew this wasn’t going to inspire an emotional response - so Atomic & heycar took a different route. 

”We wanted to find the positives in the process. Our work uncovered that there was a universal sense of joy when you first get your hands on a new car - and we knew this moment is where we could strategically differentiate”, Rebecca explained. 

Atomic developed a new proposition for heycar. Used cars never felt so good. 

Standing out creatively

Katy Sumption, Executive Creative Director at Atomic London, explored the advantages of focusing on this “feel good” moment in the work. And nothing says feeling good like a bit of karaoke in the car. 

The first campaign featured a new car owner performing an extraordinarily perfect lip-sync to Flo Rida’s iconic track ‘Good Feeling.’  “We can all relate to these moments of driving joy,” continued Katy. “And this really resonated with audiences - with heycar’s brand awareness sharply rising from 4% to 11%.”. 

The second part of the campaign focused on the online journey and heycar’s new ecommerce offering. This shifting business model speaks to post-pandemic consumer purchase preferences - with attitudes changing as to what products people are willing to buy online. “We needed to capture that feel-good atmosphere - and make it clear that the car would be delivered directly to your door”, Katy explained. 

The second campaign, ‘Feel Good Your Way’, kicked off with a rapper emerging in a cloud of smoke from a delivery truck in front of an astonished customer. Both are then transported to a dealership showroom where salespeople kicked into a choreographed dance routine to the sounds of Naughty By Nature’s Hip Hop Hooray - was specially selected and the lyrics adapted to turn ‘heycar’ into an earworm of a chorus. 

These musically-infused ideas could exist across multiple formats - from sponsoring festivals to short-form digital ads - significantly boosting engagement. . The efforts of the 2022 campaign resulted in a 15% uplift in awareness, hitting a peak of 20.1% awareness during the campaign period – heycar’s highest ever result. 

Supercharging customer journeys 

The “feel good” messaging couldn’t exist in adverts alone. It needed to be communicated throughout the entire customer journey and across every touchpoint - whether on the website, or at a festival, or on email. 

“This isn’t a marketing platform,” pointed Rebecca. “This is a consumer platform that means the customer is at the heart of every single decision made. This was a really good test for us to make sure everything synced up across the heycar experience and customer journey”. 

And this syncing paid off. 

The brand saw a surge in awareness, rising from 5% in 2019 to 20% by 2022. “Consumers were clearly learning and embracing heycar and its brand ethos through our creative consistency,” said Rebecca. But it wasn’t just about awareness. Amidst a competitive category, heycar was able to achieve a massive 10% uplift in consideration as consumers began to buy into the brand.  

A crucial part of heycar’s business stems from driving leads through its website. The campaign was crucial in increasing search traffic by a massive 127% - overtaking its competitive set for brand search interest on Google for the first time ever. Leads attributed to brand influencing channels increased 34% YoY between 2021 and 2022, with Organic Brand growing 44% and Direct by 37%.

And beyond this - the campaign was recognised by the industry, winning the Automotive category at The Drum Awards for Marketing EMEA.

“What was clear from the start was that Atomic really understood our business objectives,” Charlotte summarised. “And the tangible sense of fun you get from the campaign stems from the energy and enthusiasm we felt in every pre-production meeting and brainstorm.”. 

To learn more about this campaign, Atomic and the power of performance-driven marketing - get in touch here.