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Viral reel puts NZ Cheap Cars on the map
At NZ Cheap Cars, you might be surprised at just how low they can go and I’m not just talking about their prices.
The car dealer, which has five shops across Auckland, Hamilton and Tauranga, aims to provide affordable prices on a range of cars. Its new content series, featuring a dancing trio acting as staff members in the sales team, has seen it go viral on social media in the last two months.
At the end of 2024, NZ Cheap Cars got in contact with Auckland-based digital marketing agency Byond, for help to build a bigger and better brand, says Byond’s managing director Tony Collins.
Cars can be tough to market – people are often not shopping around for one until they need to, he adds.
So, Byond’s strategy was to focus on building brand awareness, because return on investment usually follows.
“We leant on trends and popular songs… and looked at worked for others. We wanted to make sure it was entertaining and provided value.
“We wanted to stay away from hard sells. Great deals on cars was obviously not the foucs and to turn a follower to a fan, you have to have a story.”
Dancing troupe
That story began with a reel posted to Instagram and Tik Tok in March with the caption: “Hey… it’s the sales team. We’re gonna need your help 👀”
In the skit, the NZ Cheap Cars manager reveals to his sales team that to keep the car prices low, they’ve had to cut the marketing department.
“So it’s over to you guys… you’ll just have to figure it out.”
The sales team ponder this predicament and ask each other: “what is he expecting us to do? Get out there and dance?”
This is the lightbulb moment and all three men, including the manager, get up and start busting some moves, made famous from other viral Tik Tok videos.
Nine videos have been posted to social media so far, following the fictional staff members, who are played by professional dancers. All have been popular, but it was the reel posted on May 14, set to Beyonce’s song Partition, that has had over 9 million views on Tik Tok and over 7 million on Instagram.
It’s captioned “POV: When customers ask, ‘how low can you go?'”
The inspiration came from the drop it low trend that was popular on Tik Tok over the last few years, says Collins.
Positive affiliation
Collins says he knew the campaign would hit well, but he never expected it to hit this well. As well as going viral on social media, it also made headlines on Stuff.
It’s all about building positive affiliation – so that when people are in the market for a car, NZ Cheap Cars is top of mind, he adds.
The campaign has seen the car dealer pick up many new followers, both in Aotearoa and overseas, many of the latter discussing in the comments the merits of moving over just to “buy a car”.
In general, the response has been positive as people applaud the style of advertising – “They are very aware it is an ad and that it is marketing, but they get the value and the laugh.
“If your ad provides value in this way, then people get behind it.”
