Agency The Monkeys created a the first mass market ad campaign for CarAdvice, Australia’s leading independent auto publisher, and it’s a strange one.
Entitled “The Advisors,” the campaign examines the great lengths that CarAdvice journalists go through in checking every detail of the vehicles it reviews, but in a way that is much more tongue-in-cheek than straightforward. In broadcast spot “Headlights,” for example, a man dressed as a kangaroo (because in Australia, that’s what you have to worry about running over in your car, we suppose) carries on a conversation with an Advisor, stopping to stare straight ahead every time a driver tests the car’s headlights. Two other spots, “Wind Deflector” and “Mirrors” take a similar approach (with less kangaroo strangeness) in testing other features. The sheer strangeness of the approach, which nevertheless delivers a pretty clear message, makes for a fairly memorable campaign, especially for the category. In addition to broadcast, the campaign will also include digital, cinema and OOH elements.
“The CarAdvice journos really do test every detail of every new car, so it’s kind of hard to exaggerate the lengths they go to,” The Monkeys executive creative director Scott Nowell told LBB. “The Advisors campaign celebrates this attention to detail in a way that stays true to the brand’s commitment to being entertaining rather than boring people to death with car waffle.”