• by Tanya Gazdik , March 1, 2018

DriveTime has fun with the idea that buying a car can make even the smartest consumer feel a little dumb.

“No matter how much we demand smarter, more convenient ways of purchasing other items in our lives, we reluctantly go through the old-school drudgery at the dealership when it comes to one of the biggest purchases we make,” said Anne Elisco-Lemme, executive creative director at Duncan Channon, DriveTime’s agency of record since 2012.

A $50 million campaign launches March 5 and includes two national TV spots with the tagline  “The Genius Way to Buy a Car." The campaign is part of a larger strategic pivot for the country’s second largest used vehicle retailer focused exclusively on used vehicle sales.

While previous efforts have focused on “rescuing” consumers with lower credit scores, the company is now targeting customers with prime and near-prime credit.

The pivot includes changes in DriveTime’s online and retail experiences, pricing and vehicle inventory. It aims to put the brand in direct competition with auto retailing heavyweights like AutoNation and CarMax. The brand has 145 dealerships nationwide and sells more than 150,000 used vehicles annually.

“Our strategic pivot is grounded in listening to what we know car buyers want — to make the car buying process easy by setting a transparent expectation about the price of car and down payment online and then over-delivering on that promise,” said Scott Worthington, vice president, retail and marketing, DriveTime.

Duncan Channon worked with visual effects partner Freefolk and director Perlorian Brothers on the TV spots, which feature two fictional brainiacs: marine biologist Dakota Isaacs and mathematician Gunter Zoolof. The two claim remarkable academic and scientific achievements, yet fail to be true geniuses because they don’t outsmart the notoriously unpleasant car buying process by using DriveTime. Spots will run on national cable networks including A&E, ESPN, History, Discovery and USA, and on local broadcast stations in 68 markets, as well as digitally on Facebook and YouTube. 

Beyond new advertising, DriveTime is aggressively courting audiences with good credit via competitive pricing based on the Kelly Blue Book Price Advisor and low APRs and down payments for those with Fico scores above 550. DriveTime has also added 6,000+ late model, low mileage used vehicles with strong market demand to its national inventory.