E-Commerce Platform Carsome's Rude Posters Share the Love Between Families

Global creative commerce agency VMLY&R COMMERCE Malaysia, and Carsome, Southeast Asia’s largest integrated car e-commerce platform, continue to drive witty campaigns together - most recently around Chinese New Year. 

Entitled ‘Carsome New Year: Love Is The Greatest Prosperity’, the bold 2-page print wraps dominate Malaysia’s top 5 biggest English- and Chinese-language daily newspapers. Irreverent headlines like ‘This Chinese New Year, give your mother the boot’ and ‘Stop buying your brother new things! He doesn’t deserve it’, are followed by heart-warming handwritten notes. These go on to express the love that family members have for each other and wish readers a ‘Happy Carsome New Year.’

Given that the Lunar New Year period is a popular time for gifting cars to family members, the creative work elevates awareness of Carsome, illustrating that everyone is loved by their families and that a pre-loved car is the perfect present. The campaign moves away from seeing prosperity purely as financial wealth, redefining it as love given and received. That wealth doesn’t have to be shiny and new; it can also be shiny and used. 

The choice of medium also moves away from the conventional ‘family-love’ short-films usually produced for Chinese New Year. Print newspapers are still a popular and pre-loved medium in Malaysia, especially among the primary target audience of older readers. The declarations of familial love were crowd-sourced, then literally handwritten and illustrated by local artist, SshownC in her unique style.

Commenting on the work, Carsome’s chief brand officer Derek Tan said: “Long form never went away, or rather, the love for insights and writing that matters remains. Often-times it’s easier to do another film, but sometimes you just need to write from the heart. We are fortunate to have partners who understand Carsome’s take and voice of what is meaningful for our loved ones, the people we cherish and how we can move forward with them this Chinese New Year. We are happy that the VMLY&R team rose with us to the occasion with this heart-felt campaign which sends a message that used cars need not be a compromise.” 

Added Chan Woei Hern, VMLY&R executive creative director, Malaysia and Southeast Asia: “The brief and strategy from the clients were very clear, a pre-loved car brings just as much value and sometimes even more than a brand new one. That inspired us to think of us, as individuals. And as we celebrate the idea of prosperity, maybe it’s an opportunity to look at where we are, and how prosperity is all around us in the form of our loved ones. What if we were ‘pre-loved’ year after year by our families to get to where we are? This is, literally a love letter to each and every one of our family. And how Carsome can help you be part of their narrative for a change.”

This follows Carsome’s just-wrapped ‘Meet the Carsome Interns’ campaign which tapped three of Malaysia’s top influencers to help create the fun. 

Tapping into a combined fan base of over 3.3million Instagram followers, the campaign engaged the talent of three major influencers in Malaysia – Elizabeth Tan, @elizabethtan; Douglas Lim, @thedouglaslim; and Luqman Podolski, @luqmanpodolski. Each influencer gave their own take on interns interviewing online for Carsome’s real-life Co-founder and Group CEO Eric Cheng and HR Director Mohd Afifi Zahari. In those ‘interviews’ and after, they helped promote the many benefits the e-tailer has to offer to buyers of Carsome Certified cars, including Carsome’s stringent 175-point inspection for quality assurance, 5-day money-back guarantee, and a 1-year warranty and fixed prices with no hidden fees. 

Part of a wider push to highlight why consumers should 'Carsome Je Lah' (“Make it Carsome”) this is VMLY&R COMMERCE’s second major initiative for Carsome in Malaysia, following the successful ‘Setelus Raya Carsome’ Hari Raya campaign for Malaysia and Indonesia. 

The campaign promotes why Carsome is different and how its leadership felt compelled to move people forward in mobility solutions. Its strategic thrust is to allay the scepticism that many Malaysian consumers have towards purchasing cars online and is in line with VMLY&R COMMERCE’s work for Carsome across Southeast Asia, including this quirky and highly viewed film from Thailand.