• by Tanya Gazdik , January 30, 2020

TrueCar, a digital automotive marketplace, is launching a revamped consumer experience and rebrand aimed at attracting a broader audience, particularly more women and millennials.

This is the company’s first visual identity update since the company was founded in 2005 and the first major change in advertising direction in five years.

The new process includes personalized connection features that provide consumers with new vehicle discovery tools, an enhanced used car experience and a choice in how many certified dealers connect with them.

TrueCar partnered with design firm Pentagram on its new brand identity, strategy, and design direction, which includes a new logo and color palette.

The work also included a rebrand of TrueCar’s subsidiary, ALG, for the first time providing a stronger visual connection between the two brands.

Lucas Donat, chief brand officer at TrueCar, calls the rebranding “the embodiment of our aspiration to create a world where shopping for a car is uplifting.” Millennials are actually buying cars at greater proportions than ever before, and women make or influence 82% of car-buying decisions, he adds.

TrueCar's social channels including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube will be updated with the new brand identity. New advertising creative will be customized and leveraged across all major media channels, Donat says.

“Our media mix was TV/radio/SEM dominant and will now shift to a much more distributed mix across online video, display, social, search, TV (both connected and linear) and radio,” Donat tells Marketing Daily. 

The brand spent $65 million on media in 2018. Year-end figures for 2019 are not yet available. 

The company will share the rebranding with auto dealers at the National Automobile Dealers Association conference next month, he says.

“We'll also execute on some sponsored content opportunities and explore brand partnerships that would focus on building connections with our new audience targets,” Donat says. “Our approach to media is more flexible than ever before. Over time, we expect this to shift our media mindset from a fixed budget to a variable based on ROAS (return on advertising spend), which ultimately will allow us to create more brand impressions over time.”

Traditional linear television has always been a big part of TrueCar’s media mix, he says. “We're still investing heavily in linear TV, but we're expanding the aperture to connected TV, digital and social in addition to radio and SEM,” Donat says. 

Today’s digital native car buyers are accustomed to buying almost everything through an online platform, said Mike Darrow, interim CEO and president of TrueCar. 

“So giving consumers more convenience and choice is at the heart of this change,” Darrow says in a statement. “We believe this will result in more productive interactions between consumers and dealers.”