Vibrant shades of blue and yellow, a new font, a fresh tagline, and a new campaign have taken carsales from its beginnings as a classified to a multi-faceted marketplace following its newly launched rebrand.
Rafael Constantinou, carsales EGM of Marketing, Content & Customer, told Mediaweek that going in-house to develop and design new assets for the 28-year-old brand allowed their team to understand and solve design, business, and customer problems.
“What we wanted to achieve in-house was to evolve the brand externally and the product experience. If you think of product experience, you’re always going to have those teams in-house.
“Having an internal team doing that is exactly the cohesiveness you see in the product experience.
“In our websites, app, emails, and ads, you’ll see cohesiveness. This is probably the one thing we wanted to achieve from the get-go, and it was important to have.
“Not saying that it couldn’t have that with an agency, but I think at least in terms of time to market, it brought us a lot more agility.”
Constantinou: ‘What we wanted to achieve in-house was to evolve the brand externally and the product experience.’
The multi-channel campaign is set to run across digital, social, video, connected TVs, and out-of-home over the coming months.
The in-house team behind the rebrand brought in close to 100 people from the company across marketing, content, brand, social, design, and product, spanning its marketplaces.
The fresh tag line, Buy it. Sell it. Love it, cements carsales’ mission of helping people buy or sell their car.
Constantinou noted that based on observations from customer feedback and internal discussions, the phrase “love it” is said by Australians to express a winning feeling.
“People don’t really need to love the car, boat, or bike, but they need to love that feeling a good deal or the best offer.”
He shared that the leadership team even came to the realisation that they also use the phrase in their day-to-day, which highlights its cultural relevance.
Why data played a key role in informing the carsales rebrand
Carsales began discussions on the brand refresh a year ago, around the same time as the launch of its payment solution program, pay-through carsales, which allows for hassle-free and safer transactions with ID-verified sellers, a program launch in a bid to help prevent and avoid scams.
“We started discussions and then we went back and forth with different designs, colours and experiences until we got to where we are today, which we are very happy with.”
Constantinou shared that the data they had on customers helped inform decisions on shaping the new look, such as 80% of customers using dark mode on the platform, and how many people associate the master brand carsales to its other leisure brands, such as bike sales and boat sales.
“Some people were not aware of that, and we felt there was an opportunity, especially because they would trust those brands even more if they knew they were part of car sales.”
He added that because of carsales’ reputation and almost 30 years in the lives of Australians, focus groups and external research was conducted to understand how sensitive they would be to change.
Constantinou also noted that the research revealed gaps and opportunities to grow within growing key audiences such as migrants, women, and Gen Z who are looking for information on buying a car, safety, and getting a driver’s license.
“We could be the brand connecting people to this new journey. When we see the consumption of these audiences and our brand compared, we felt the opportunity to evolve, to be bolder and fresher.”
He added that the brand refresh was the “tip of the iceberg” for carsales with a content series in the works for its social media channels.
Consistency and AI
Beyond the visual brand refresh, carsales has new tools and features that aim to make the buying and selling journey more seamless.
In addition to the payment solution program, the car marketplace brand has invested in a newly launched AI search, which evolves each time and delivers results based on natural language.
Constantinou explained that until a few months ago, people using carsales would need to input details such as brand, model, and year to find a car.
“Now the idea is to get to a point where you can use your natural language, no matter if you know a lot about cars or you just need a car to commute.”
He also noted that the team is working on building a cross-search connection between cars and other verticals.
Constantinou said that AI was an important co-pilot in the brand refresh process for users, from search algorithms, customer tools, identifying possible scammers, and the in-house agency’s productivity in helping ensure consistency across different teams and environments working across the country.
“We use it to keep track of consistency and to help us also understand how to streamline our process.
“We’ve been using data automation and analysis to help us identify the sources of data we have, the insights that better connect to what we are doing, and help us predict what we should be doing next.”
Expanding carsales’ calendar of content
Looking ahead, Constantinou shared that Carsales is launching a new calendar of content that aims to be comprehensive and inclusive.
“We still have content for the enthusiasts, buyers, sellers, people that are in the journey, but we want to produce content in a way that we also achieve acquiring new audiences and deliver entertainment or cultural aspects of Australia.
“We’ll be expanding what we do, especially in video and social media.”
Carsales is also set to launch another campaign with content creators on Instagram and TikTok that spans across a wide range of audiences, from families, DIY creators, Gen Z, women, immigrants, and car enthusiasts.
Among the enlisted creators are Chloe Dillon, Seb Laz, and Georgie Sian.
“The idea is to launch and reach new audiences, drive growth, and help people buy and sell their vehicles. We’ll also be expanding that to the other marketplaces very soon as well.
“For our partners and customers, this ultimately will drive them more business. At the end, we still will be connecting buyers, sellers.
“The idea is that we drive more trust, more content, more sales for our sellers.”
Top image: Rafael Constantinou