Auto technicians (and the automotive industry in general) are one of the most mistrusted industries in Australia. One where jargon and technical terms are used to deliberately confuse, rather than facilitate.

Mycar Tyre & Auto, one of Australia’s largest tyre and automotive service/repair companies (with over 275 stores nationwide) are dedicated to putting ‘People First'.

So they decided to break free of this misconception and genuinely help Australians to be more confident when talking about their car.

Our aim was to reduce the embarrassment people feel when talking with automotive experts through behaviour change that puts education in the hands of customers when they need it most.

A tool to help people learn the language of car.

A web based tool - it translated over 200 technical terms consumers were used to hearing at the auto technician, into humorous and easy to understand analogies to educate drivers.

Interactive and designed to be used where consumers were most confused by technical automotive language, people could simply pull their phone from their pocket then talk, type or upload a bill to translate car parts in real time.

Google search data was used to determine the most frequently searched terms before we worked with our own experts and to translate the technical terminology into explanations everyone could understand.

Auto-Translate is now also used by mycar’s call center staff to help explain technical terms to those on the other end of the phone - bridging the car language barrier between experts and customers.

Beyond the tool, every element was designed to educate and drive customers through

Car owners had a genuine reason to be skeptical of the Automotive service category.

A survey from industry body AAA: American Automobile Association shows most drivers don’t trust auto mechanics. 76 % believe repair shops recommend unnecessary services and 73% believe mechanics overcharge for work.

88% of people surveyed in our research agreed they wished they knew more about their car as it would make them feel more confident when they take it in for repairs or servicing.

With our brand and service being tarnished by car owners' assumptions, we knew the only way to tackle the problem head on was through education to build consumer’s understanding of their car and in turn, their confidence.

Creating a tool that was genuinely helpful was just one part of our comms strategy.

To launch Auto-Translate tool, we created satirical online films that set up the problem of car ‘un-understanding’ - a huge issue affecting hundreds of thousands of people - and provided the solution.

The film also served as a demonstration of the functionality of the tool and neatly explained a few analogies of the most commonly misunderstood terms.

In paid social, real stories unpack the humiliation and confusion people are facing as they bumble their way through conversations with their auto technicians.

Influencers created humorous vox pop style content across Instagram and TikTok - demonstrating the level of car language misunderstanding among the population at large.

Each digital banner unpacks an individual car term or part and provides the translation, educating while driving clicks to the tool itself.

With over 200 translated terms (at the time of publishing) Auto-Translate has been built as a long term utility meaning new car terms will be added.

The campaign reached more than 25 million people nationwide, appearing across news, broadcast and radio.

mycar website traffic was up 52% over the same period the previous year..

Sales and servicing were up 8% YOY for the month the campaign launched.

Because Auto-Translate gives easy to understand analogies to explain technical terms, it out performed Google’s own translation service - ranking #1 in Google search.

And mycar now has a customer satisfaction score of 4.84* on an industry average of

3.53.

But the tool isn’t just for those confused about technical car language, mycar call center operators are now using it to better communicate with customers.

*rise of 0.04 at the time of publishing.