Part of our DNA is that we don’t pay more for cars than they’re actually worth. A 1996 Honda ain’t worth much. So, in order to “sweeten” the deal, we had to find a creative workaround. We had literally 45 minutes to concept an idea. As we sat down, an art director mumbled, “Why don’t we just buy the fucking cat.” So that’s what we did. Our creative idea was to offer to buy everything, not just the car, in the original video. We offered $5,000.00 for the cat. We offered $3,500 for a coffee pot that was featured. We offered $500.00 for a sandwich eaten on a scenic overlook. In total, our offer was $20,000 for the car and everything in it. A fair offer in our estimation. And we were very clear that the cat was non-negotiable.

The execution of our offer was done in the form of a whimsical video called “CarMax Goes All In for ’96 Honda Accord.” We created a spokesperson, who made the offer for the car, the cat, the mug, the coffee pot and the sandwich directly. Because this was a real-time social response to something that was already live, we knew we had to act fast. In less than 24 hours, we had a video response, and we direct-tweeted it to the original video’s creator. He responded in 20 minutes.

The results were staggering. Our video was viewed over 318,000 times in the first 24 hours. We garnered 3.6 million media impressions. Made it to the front page of Reddit, #11 with 34,000 upvotes. The video was covered by 232 local and national media outlets. We saw encouraging lifts in positive impressions and ad awareness. And the best result is that the guy sold us his 1996 Honda. And we kept our side of the bargain. We even let him keep the cat and donated $5,000.00 to a kitty rescue.

How’d America’s #1 used car retailer find itself offering to buy cats? It starts with our awareness problem. Everyone knows we sell cars, but only one in five knows we also buy cars. Worse: most people who do come see us find our offers at least $500 too low.

But we had a hunch this power couple didn’t create this video for the dinero, but for recognition. So instead of offering them the most money for their car (bidding for the car on eBay had gone up to $150K), we offered them a chance to extend the gag while giving CarMax a chance to demonstrate what they do best when it comes to buying cars — making it simple and painless. Because you don’t have to cast, shoot and produce a fancy commercial to sell your shitty car. We’ll buy it. Simple as that.

A guy created a charming spoof of a luxury car ad to help sell his fiancée’s 1996 Honda Accord, “Greenie.” It took him over a year to make. And people ate it up. It went viral overnight. He was on Good Morning America the next day. It was the internet “thing” of the moment. We wanted to respond in real time, get in on the conversation and harness some of this “viral wind” in our sails.

Our brief was simple: create a video response within 24 hours that let him and the world know that you don’t have to spend more than a year making a crazy video to sell your fiancée’s shitty car, because we’ll buy your fiancée’s shitty car, no questions asked.

Our objective was for our video to get noticed and for the guy to sell us his car.