CarBravo and its agency, MRM Detroit, are back at it again with a creative commerce play that puts some personality and fun back in the car shopping experience.
During the upcoming 2025 auto show in Detroit, CarBravo will blanket Downtown Detroit – and specifically outside Huntington Place Convention Center – with 1,000-plus toy-sized pop-up shops. This guerilla-style campaign uses tiny cars to promote big savings by redirecting some attention from inside the traditional showroom to highlighting affordable – but still awesome – used vehicles from CarBravo.
This unique activation is in some ways a creative extension of CarBravo’s Cannes Lion-winning commerce play from 2024. In that award-winning campaign, Car Bravo acquired highly-inflated, used Barbie toy cars (because of the Barbie mania at the time) and sold them at fair and honest prices — just like the full-sized vehicles on their site.
This year, CarBravo and MRM Detroit are using 1:64 scale, toy-sized cars, SUVs, and trucks all perfectly presented as a “pop-up shop” with a special QR code. When scanned, the code directs auto show enthusiasts to begin searching for their desired vehicle type at metro Detroit-area CarBravo dealers.
Launched in 2022, CarBravo was created by GM to help reinvigorate and elevate the entire used-car experience. Consumers can choose from a wide array of different makes and models with the peace of mind of a GM-backed certification. Consumers can shop online, in-person, or any combo of the two along their journey.
The first phase of the pop-up campaign is live as of January 11th. Approximately 800,000 people attend auto show in Detroit annually.
Steve Wineman, Marketing and Advertising Manager, GM’s CarBravo
“CarBravo is all about delivering a unique used car experience, and getting our message out via a thousand toy cars during Detroit’s biggest auto week is definitely unique. It’s a fun, playful way to tell our story, sell some cars and help everyone feel the usedphoria.”
Jeff Cruz, Chief Creative Officer, MRM Detroit:
“CarBravo is all about a fun and positive shopping experience, so of course a thousand toy-sized pop-up shops serving as a smile-inducing invitation into our commerce site seemed right on brand.”
