We were tasked with developing pre-roll branding for the Honda Certified Program's benefits. Our biggest hurdle was that Honda Certified's program isn't meaningfully different from its competition. We were targeting certified pre-owned shoppers who skew younger, lower income and more diverse than our average Honda shopper. We needed to show our target audience what made our program different from other programs. The answer is Honda. We're one of the most trusted automakers in America and Honda Certified works hard to build on that trust by providing unmatched transparency into the certified pre-owned buying experience.
We bought pre-owned pre-roll to sell Honda Certified Pre-Owned Vehicles. Instead of spending lots of money making brand new ads, we stretched our dollar by buying used. We went to brands that aligned with our various demographics and then made the unusual request to buy their old ads. Big brands, like Del Taco, POM Wonderful, Smileactives, Magic Tracks and Timbuk2 quickly jumped on our pre-owned bandwagon at the chance to give their used videos new life. We added our own graphics, music and voiceover so fans knew Honda had taken over. By mirroring the process of buying Certified Pre-Owned, we cut through the mundane pre-roll clutter to entertain our YouTube audience who was hovering above the "Skip Now" button to watch cat videos and Vine compilations (RIP Vine). In doing so, we built awareness for Honda Certified Pre-Owned Vehicles to a broad audience, from thousands of starving Del Taco fans to late-night QVC subscribers looking for a brighter Smileactives smile.
Pre-Owned Pre-Roll saw 687,969 video views with 147,119 completed views totaling a 21.4% completion rate during the last reporting period. HCPV TrueView click-through rate has stayed consistent at 0.54%, improving the previous CTR of .12%.
