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.