In Los Angeles — the nation’s largest car market and Edmunds’ hometown — the brand faced a fundamental challenge: How does a digital car-shopping resource earn attention in a crowded, competitive space where consumers rarely think about automotive tools until they’re ready to buy?
The answer was the multi-layered Project Triple Play, our largest integrated marketing investment to date.
Rather than treat LA as just another media market, we believed a deeply concentrated, culturally fluent campaign could outperform diffuse national spend and deliver stronger brand lift, faster learning and clearer performance signals.
The campaign was designed in-house to achieve three goals:
First, strengthen hometown audience reach and brand awareness among LA consumers by meeting them where they’re already engaged — not on car sites, but in the cultural moments they love.
Second, elevate consumer awareness of Edmunds’ free appraisal tools at a critical moment: the debut of our Multi-Offer product, which provides car owners up to three free, transactable offers on their vehicle alongside an Edmunds appraisal.
Third, drive measurable traffic and conversions to a new custom landing page experience, proving that brand marketing can deliver tangible business impact.
The campaign’s name itself reflects our strategy: “Triple Play” leveraged the power of three — three beloved local brand pillars (Tommy Edman + Original Tommy’s restaurants + Edmunds), three marketing channels (owned +earned + paid), and three offers for consumers.
This hyper-local approach let us be authentic, move fast with our in-house creative team and capitalize on the cultural relevance of the LA Dodgers’ World Series championship season.
Project Triple Play was a 360° collaboration uniting Brand Marketing, PR, and Organic strategy under one cohesive creative platform built entirely in-house.
The campaign centered on “Edman on the Street,” a digital and social hero featuring LA Dodgers standout Tommy Edman interviewing fans at recognizable LA landmarks. Tommy’s name — easily mistaken for Edmunds — created a natural brand association, while his authentic persona as a superutility player mirrored Edmunds’ reputation as a versatile resource for car decisions.
The phonetic alignment of Tommy Edman and Edmunds became our creative North Star, a culturally fluent idea that guided everything from content to partnerships. Original Tommy’s served as the most literal, experiential expression of that strategy.
Our LA Dodgers partnership extended reach across organic social, website, email and AM 570 Sports radio audiences. Recognizing that Edmunds’ core consumers over-index in sports affinity, we positioned the brand where fans are already engaged — not interrupting car research but joining their passions.
Because Edmunds’ appraisal tools deliver immediate, real-world value, we designed the campaign’s experiential centerpiece as a live, in-person moment — turning a digital product benefit into something consumers could experience instantly.
For the campaign centerpiece, we convinced an 80-year-old LA institution to do something it had never done: give away free food. Original Tommy’s first-ever promotional giveaway became our National Cheeseburger Day activation, evolving a previous creative concept — that Edmunds appraisals are “faster than a drive-thru” — into a literal partnership. Tommy Edman served free combo meals to fans who completed an Edmunds appraisal, creating a tangible product experience and generating coverage across CBS, KNBC, KTLA, KNX 97.1 FM, and Good Morning America’s digital roundup.
Our earned media and influencer strategy worked in tandem throughout the season. Coordinated outreach across LA lifestyle, automotive, food and sports media secured coverage in Dodger Nation, Spectrum SportsNet LA, and with LA Times baseball reporter Bill Shaikin. Local food, sports and lifestyle creators amplified the activation, while strategic social engagement from Edmunds’ owned channels joined cultural conversations in real time.
One significant challenge: Dodgers partnership exclusivity constraints prohibited using team logos alongside Original Tommy’s. To comply, we developed creative workarounds: scheduling the activation on a home gameday to capture organic fan traffic and positioning Tommy Edman as an individual personality rather than just a uniform. We also developed “coded” creative referencing “the local team” through color palettes rather than protected trademarks.
Then, when the Dodgers made the postseason, we moved fast. Treating the campaign as a “live” event, we extended national reach during MLB’s Playoffs and World Series with Dodgers homepage takeovers, radio spots across all 17 postseason games, and additional YouTube paid media — capitalizing on strategic luck to maximize our investment.
This social-first architecture represented a strategic shift for Edmunds: away from streaming TV spots toward Meta and YouTube-only content built specifically for social platforms, prioritizing genuine reactions and “unexpected delight” over polished production. All 30 creative assets were developed by our internal team.
Project Triple Play proved that concentrated regional investment outperforms thin national spend, with a 111% lift in Google searches for “Edmunds” in LA and a +22 point Meta ad recall — more than double the 10.5 point benchmark and the highest in Edmunds history.
Brand awareness achieved additional lifts: +8.8% Google Awareness (first time reaching statistical significance) and +5.4% brand consideration among 35- to 44-year-olds — the prime car-buying demographic.
Social performance exceeded every benchmark: 96% Meta through-play rate (vs. 58% benchmark), 45% share of voice across all Meta target audiences with 10.7x frequency, and 28% engagement rate (vs. 22% benchmark). Our in-house creative delivered 109M impressions against 52.2M benchmark.
The National Cheeseburger Day activation drove 1.8M social media views at $14 CPM (–81% vs. awareness benchmark), 83K engagements (4.7% engagement rate, +57% vs. benchmark), 89% new visitor rate — highest across the entire campaign.
Traffic and conversion results validated our product-first strategy: 595K visits to our Multi-Offer custom landing page, 2x higher click rate vs. evergreen campaigns, and 22% seven-day return rate (vs. 12% for previous campaigns).
The bottom-line impact: 7% lift in non-paid appraisal completes in LA DMA and 7.4% lift to buy rate — despite a 19.3% decline in offer strength in the LA market during this period.
Postseason extension delivered bonus reach: 6.8M radio impressions across 17 games, 2.2M Dodgers website impressions, and +4.37% YouTube awareness lift.
Total investment: $980K media spend delivered at $16.42 cost per impression with lower cost per awareness point vs. FY25.
