GM Spurred CarBravo Used Vehicle Sales By Offering Cheap Barbie Dream Cars

The GM CarBravo used vehicle shopping platform harnessed the cultural buzz surrounding the 2023 movie Barbie, starring Margot Robbie, to help achieve a record-breaking sales month for used vehicles. CarBravo, which serves as GM’s digital retail platform for used car sales, collaborated with the McCann MRM marketing agency to create a unique campaign leveraging the iconic Barbie Dream Car toy. The campaign was hugely popular, and helped to secure millions of dollars in used car sales.

The campaign was recognized with a 2024 Global Automotive Marketing Award for best national sales event campaign, per AdAge. McCann MRM launched the campaign by first purchasing a trove of Barbie Dream Cars at inflated market prices, then resold the toy cars at more reasonable prices (most around $10) through a Shopify commerce store that was styled to resemble CarBravo.com.

The idea was to underline CarBravo’s commitment to fair and transparent pricing, mirroring its ethos in the used car market via toy cars.

Each toy car was paired with a QR code linking directly to a CarBravo listing featuring a real vehicle that matched or was similar to the toy car. The end result was hugely successful – the campaign not only sold out the Barbie Dream Cars, but also drove $2.3 million in used vehicle sales on CarBravo.com.

CarBravo marketing manager Steve Wineman reflected on the campaign’s success, saying, “The fact that this project helped support our best sales month ever was icing on the cake. Pink icing, of course.”

As a reminder, here are the differences between CarBravo and GM’s Certified Pre-Owned Vehicle program.

GM created connections to the 2023 Barbie movie in other ways, as well. For example, multiple GM vehicles were featured throughout the movie, including a pink Chevy Corvette as part of the teaser and opening sequence, a Chevy Blazer EV, and a customized GMC Hummer EV.