Centraal Beheer, famous for its ‘Just Call Us’ campaigns, had always done things a little traditionally: make a film and go big on TV. Now it was losing market share amongst car insurers and had to find innovative ways to reach new consumers.

To Centraal Beheer, insurance is more than just settling claims. They go out of their way to help people – in whatever troubling situation they might be. That’s why they are rated the most customer-friendly insurer of the Netherlands. But how could we prove that to a mass audience – who are unfamiliar with our services – and attract new customers at the same time?

We needed to do something very impactful that would a) showcase our mentality, b) solve a real problem for car owners have and c) sell insurances.

People only buy insurance, or switch insurance companies, when buying a car. We created Car Commercial To Go: an autonomous drive-thru installation that creates professional car commercials for anyone selling their car online. With this installation we made professional car commercials for private car sellers, and in turn they advertised our brand to an audience looking to buy a car. Every video ended with our campaign message, so each car ad was at the same time an ad for Centraal Beheer car insurances.

During a 3-day event, car owners could drive in, choose a scenery, wait for 40 seconds and let five projectors and a voice actor do some magic. Then they just drove out with their striking personal car commercial (at the same time a Centraal Beheer car insurance commercial) ready to hit the highly competitive digital marketplace.

In the Netherlands, 78% percent of car buyers choose a used car online from a private seller at car marketplaces like Marktplaats or Facebook Marketplace. This is the moment they either buy, or switch to a new insurer, so we decided to precisely target this target group. From a focus group we learned that a car insurance was the last thing on a car buyer’s mind. With many other things on a buyer’s mind, this meant that a rational, sales oriented message wouldn’t make it into a consumer’s mind.

We felt this gave us a great opportunity to create impact with a PR message around customer-friendliness. We decided to help those selling their car and, as a result, reach people at the moment they are looking buy one. Addressing used-car buyers directly on marketplaces, car publishers, targeted outdoor media, and radio got us into their mind in the right time.

Before the launch of the Car Commercial To Go installation, we created a film to promote the idea and recruit sellers. We distributed the film through Centraal Beheer’s internal network, their social media, and 12 partner publishers, recruiting people on a dedicated landing page.

After arriving at our drive-thru installation, sellers chose a scenery, drove in, waited for 40 seconds and let five projectors do their magic, with a voice-over narrating every detail. They simply drove out and a professional car commercial was sent to their inbox.

During the 3-day event, we shot the commercials that people could use directly in their classified ads. In addition to these ads that were placed online at marketplaces, the crowdsourced short videos were also used to advertise to a larger audience in display, digital out-of-home, and online marketplaces.

After popular demand, we extended the planned two-day event with another day, helping a total of 500+ people sell their car online with a professional commercial.

We reached 3.2M people in the Netherlands (18.6% of the Dutch population) through a combination of targeted and mass media.

The campaign was covered by the largest news outlets in Netherlands and shared en masse on popular social media pages, resulting in 3M+ earned video views and 40M media impressions.

In the first week of the campaign we grew brand preference by 25%. In the second week our top-of-mind awareness was up from 9% to 16%. And, most importantly, we increased sales by 10% (20% above target!) in a highly competitive market.