Carsome’s CNY campaign is a two-page print wrap across MY’s top five daily newspapers

Malaysia – Used car e-commerce platform Carsome in Malaysia has launched its new Chinese New Year campaign titled ‘Carsome New Year: Love Is The Greatest Prosperity’, a bold two-page print wrap that seeks to dominate Malaysia’s top five biggest English and Chinese-language daily newspapers.

The campaign, which was created with creative commerce agency VMLY&R COMMERCE Malaysia, features irreverent headlines like ‘This Chinese New Year, give your mother the boot’ and ‘Stop buying your brother new things! He doesn’t deserve it’, followed by heart-warming handwritten notes. These go on to express the love that family members have for each other and wish readers a ‘Happy Carsome New Year.’

VMLY&R COMMERCE said that the campaign elevates awareness of Carsome, illustrating that everyone is loved by their families and that a pre-loved car is a perfect present. It also moves away from seeing prosperity purely as financial wealth, redefining it as love given and received.

Moreover, the choice of medium moves away from the conventional ‘family-love’ short films usually produced for Chinese New Year, as print newspapers are still a popular and pre-loved medium in Malaysia, especially amongst the primary target audience of older readers. The declarations of familial love were crowd-sourced, then literally handwritten and illustrated by local artist, SshownC in her unique style.

Derek Tan, Carsome’s chief brand officer, commented that they are fortunate to have partners who understand Carsome’s take and voice of what is meaningful for their loved ones, the people they cherish and how they can move forward with them this Chinese New Year. 

“We are happy that the VMLY&R team rose with us to the occasion with this heart-felt campaign which sends a message that used cars need not be a compromise,” said Tan.

Meanwhile, Woei Hern Chan, VMLY&R’s executive creative director for Malaysia and SEA, shared that the brief and strategy from the clients were very clear, as a pre-loved car brings just as much value and sometimes even more than a brand new one, and that inspired them to think of individuals. 

“And as we celebrate the idea of prosperity, maybe it’s an opportunity to look at where we are, and how prosperity is all around us in the form of our loved ones. What if we were ‘pre-loved’ year after year by our families to get to where we are? This is, literally a love letter to each and every one of our family. And how Carsome can help you be part of their narrative for a change,” said Chan.