Carwow plays on car-buying pains with tongue-in-cheek social media series

The four shorts open with Carwow’s chief content officer Mat Watson, who is well-known as the presenter of the brand’s successful YouTube channel which boasts over 8m subscribers. In the ads, he plays the role of the burnt-out car buyer and seller.

In each of the videos, the premise is that by using Carwow people will get more of a ‘wow’ experience.

Ben Carter, chief marketing officer at Carwow, explained: “Changing your car is a big deal in anyone’s life with the sums of money involved in many purchases being second only to buying or selling your home. But, our research showed that 40% of drivers are worried they won’t get a fair price when selling their current car.

“We think there’s a lot getting in the way of feeling ‘wow’ about the typical experience motorists have, and that’s what our campaign brings to life - whether that’s timewasters, no-show’ers, tire-kickers, jargon-users, the up-sellers, 'Sorry it’s already sold' or the 'how about I give you £3k less' negotiators

“At Carwow we make the car changing experience ‘Only Wow’ - we offer consumers great value, market-wide choice, total convenience and of course, a service they can trust.”

The campaign comes from the digital agency Dept and will be rolled out across social media channels, including Meta, YouTube and TikTok.

Jeff Bowerman, executive creative director at Dept, added: “They say don’t lead with negativity in advertising, but anyone who has bought or sold a car before knows it’s not always the smoothest experience.

“Rather than pretending these experiences don’t exist, being able to highlight the ‘wow’ of Carwow’s service - through the relatable ‘less than wow’ experiences we show in the creative - was a really fun campaign for us to create, which we hope will see great cut-through."