2. Toyota: "Let's Go Places," 2012 to present. Toyota replaced its long-running "Moving Forward" tagline with "Let's Go Places" in September 2012, unifying its global messaging under a single optimistic platform. The campaign launched across television, digital, print, and experiential activations, including a nationwide festival tour in 2013 that brought the brand directly to consumers in non-traditional settings. The tagline ran across every Toyota sub-brand, from Camry to Tacoma. Toyota has held its position as the world's best-selling automaker for the majority of the campaign's run, delivering more than 2.3 million U.S. sales in 2023. The platform's longevity, over a decade, makes it one of the most durable positioning plays in automotive history. The company's wider communications model is profiled in Toyota public relations, and its per-model approach is in the Toyota marketing strategy breakdown.
3. Chevrolet: "Find New Roads," 2013 to 2023. General Motors retired the short-lived "Chevy Runs Deep" slogan in January 2013 and replaced it with "Find New Roads," a globally unified tagline designed to work across more than 140 markets. The campaign repositioned Chevrolet from a nostalgia brand to a forward-looking one, and it arrived as GM was rebuilding its image after the 2009 bankruptcy. The tagline anchored everything from Silverado truck ads to Bolt EV launches. Chevrolet held steady as the fourth-best-selling brand in the U.S. throughout the campaign's run. In October 2023, Chevrolet announced "Together Let's Drive" as its replacement, according to the Detroit Free Press, and MediaPost reported that the decade-old tagline would be phased out over the following year. Chevrolet's marketing vice president Steve Majoros called "Find New Roads" a phenomenal tagline for the brand, according to MediaPost.
4. Ford: Built Ford Tough and the Bronco Revival, 1979 to present and 2020. "Built Ford Tough" launched in 1979 and became the longest-running truck slogan in American advertising, with over four decades of unbroken use. It helped the F-Series become America's best-selling truck for 49 consecutive years and its best-selling vehicle for 44, according to Ford's January 2026 sales release. But Ford's marketing masterstroke of the modern era was the 2020 Bronco revival. With the Detroit auto show cancelled, Ford moved the reveal to Disney's networks: on July 13, 2020, three custom 3-minute films ran on ABC, ESPN and National Geographic, and $100 refundable reservations opened at 8 p.m. ET as the films aired. Ford confirmed to The Drive on July 31, 2020 that it had more than 150,000 reservations, 18 days after the reveal, and its CFO told CNBC in October that the total was nearly 190,000. The Bronco launch proved that heritage storytelling combined with modern reservation mechanics could generate demand before a single vehicle shipped. Ford's current communications operation is covered in Ford public relations.
5. Honda: "Paper" and The Power of Dreams, 2015. Honda and its agency RPA commissioned stop-motion director PES to create "Paper," a film of just under two minutes that follows an engine through Honda's history, from motorcycles to cars to planes, drawn on paper. According to It's Nice That, the film took four months and thousands of original drawings, and RPA describes it as built from roughly 3,000 hand-drawn paper images. Digital Republik reported about 4.5 million YouTube views. PES's own biography says he received an Emmy nomination in 2016 for directing the film, and RPA says the ad won nearly every major industry award, a claim this page has not checked against award databases. "Paper" sat inside Honda's Power of Dreams campaign, and it showed that a brand film can carry a company's history on craft alone.
6. Nissan: "Heisman House," 2011 to present. Nissan partnered with ESPN to create an ongoing comedy series featuring Heisman Trophy winners living together in a fictional house. The campaign launched in 2011 and entered its 14th season in 2024, making it one of the longest-running branded content partnerships in sports marketing. Each season features new spots with current and former Heisman winners in sitcom-style scenarios, integrated across ESPN's college football broadcasts. The campaign has generated billions of impressions across television and social media. Nissan's sustained commitment to a single comedic premise, refreshed annually with new talent, created a recurring cultural moment tied to the college football calendar.
7. BMW: "The Hire," 2001 to 2002. BMW hired directors including John Woo, Ang Lee, John Frankenheimer, Tony Scott and Guy Ritchie to make a series of eight short films starring Clive Owen as a professional driver, released on bmwfilms.com starting in April 2001. Jalopnik reports that the first five films were viewed about 11 million times in 2001, and BMWblog reports that 2 million people registered on the site. BMW later told Automotive News Europe that episodes had been downloaded more than 75 million times. Jalopnik credits the series with aiding sales growth of 12.5 percent from 2000 to 2001, though the series ran alongside other BMW marketing. Jalopnik also reports that The Hire spawned imitators, including Nissan's The Run and an Audi online series. It showed that a luxury automaker could reach its audience through films distributed on its own website. More on the brand's approach: how BMW markets through storytelling, and for the brand today, BMW's 2026 marketing strategy and BMW's PR strategy.
8. Mercedes-Benz: "The Best or Nothing," 2010 to present. Mercedes-Benz adopted "The Best or Nothing," a translation of founder Gottlieb Daimler's original maxim, "Das Beste oder nichts," as its global brand claim in 2010. The tagline replaced "Unlike Any Other" and unified the brand's messaging across every vehicle class, from the A-Class to the Maybach. The campaign has anchored more than a decade of global advertising, including high-profile Super Bowl appearances and Formula One sponsorship activations. Mercedes spent an estimated $580 million on U.S. advertising in 2019 alone. The genius of the platform is its simplicity: a three-word claim rooted in the founder's own words, flexible enough to sell a $35,000 sedan and a $200,000 grand tourer. For the 2026 picture, see EPR's Mercedes-Benz marketing strategy analysis and the #MBPhotoPass case study.
9. Porsche: Taycan Launch Stunts and Tesla Targeting, 2019 to 2021. Porsche marketed its first all-electric vehicle with stunts aimed at narrow audiences. On June 30, 2019, a Twitter account called Electricity told London to meet it at the London Eye, where the wheel flashed a Morse code message that decoded to "Hey Porsche, get me out on the road," and on July 10 a reply was projected onto the Hoover Dam. In September 2021, TBWA Switzerland ran Taycan banners that played only on Tesla in-car screens, which it identified by screen size and operating system. The agency's entry reports a budget of CHF 10,000, and Merca2.0 reports 27,668 impressions and 135 clicks, though those figures come from the agency and the brand, not an audit. The Swiss campaign showed that a small budget can reach one competitor's owners directly.
10. Audi: "Daughter," Super Bowl 2017. Audi aired a 60-second Super Bowl spot showing a father watching his young daughter compete in a soapbox derby race while narrating his internal monologue about gender pay inequality. The ad asked: "What do I tell my daughter?" The spot generated over 100 million views and became the most-discussed ad of Super Bowl LI. It polarized audiences, praised by advocates and criticized by opponents, but it dominated conversation for days. Audi backed the ad with a public commitment to equal pay at the company level. The campaign demonstrated that purpose-driven advertising could break through the Super Bowl clutter more effectively than humor or spectacle, though it also showed that taking a public stance carries real brand risk.
11. Genesis: Brand Launch, 2015 to 2017. Hyundai spun off its luxury division as a standalone brand in November 2015, launching Genesis with the G90 flagship sedan. The brand spent an estimated $200 million in its first two years building awareness from zero, investing heavily in experiential marketing, including Genesis-branded luxury lounges and partnerships with high-end cultural events. By 2024, Genesis had captured approximately 1% of the U.S. luxury market, outselling established players like Alfa Romeo and Jaguar. The brand's design-forward marketing approach, emphasizing architecture, art, and minimalism over traditional automotive tropes, positioned Genesis as the most successful new luxury car brand launch since Lexus debuted in 1989.
Value Brands and Challengers
12. Hyundai: "Assurance," Super Bowl 2009. In the depths of the Great Recession, Hyundai announced the Assurance program in January 2009 and promoted it with a Super Bowl ad from Goodby Silverstein & Partners, according to Digiday. A buyer who lost a job within a year could return the car, and Hyundai would absorb the loss in the car's value up to $7,500, according to CNNMoney. While other automakers cut budgets and offered cash-back deals, Hyundai addressed the actual fear, job loss, head on. Hyundai's January 2009 U.S. sales rose more than 14% while industry sales fell 37%, according to CNNMoney and the campaign's Cannes Lions entry, and Reuters reported that Hyundai's full-year 2009 U.S. sales rose more than 8% while the industry fell 21%. Digiday reports that Ad Age named Hyundai its Marketer of the Year and that Hyundai reached its highest U.S. market share by mid-2009. The agency's awards entry reports more than 350 news stories and more than 100 million PR impressions, figures that are agency-reported. The case showed that answering one specific fear can outperform a discount.
13. Hyundai: "Smaht Pahk," Super Bowl 2020. Hyundai debuted the Sonata's Remote Smart Parking Assist feature with a 60-second Super Bowl spot starring Chris Evans, John Krasinski, Rachel Dratch, and David "Big Papi" Ortiz, all hamming up thick Boston accents. The ad premiered pre-game and racked up over 50 million online views within 48 hours. It was named the most-liked ad of Super Bowl LIV by USA Today's Ad Meter. The campaign won Shorty Awards and drove a measurable spike in Sonata configurator visits. The tactical brilliance was taking a technical feature, remote parking, and making it the punchline of a regional comedy bit, proving that product-feature advertising can work at the Super Bowl if the entertainment value is high enough.
14. Subaru: "Love," 2008 to present. In 2008, Subaru and its agency Carmichael Lynch launched the "Love" platform ("Love. It's what makes a Subaru, a Subaru.") targeting passionate existing owners rather than conquest buyers. The strategy was unconventional: instead of chasing volume, Subaru leaned into its niche audience of outdoor enthusiasts, dog lovers, and safety-conscious families. The result was the longest consecutive sales-growth streak in U.S. automotive history, with year-over-year increases for more than a decade straight after the campaign launched. By 2019, annual U.S. sales exceeded 700,000 units, up from roughly 187,000 in 2008. The "Share the Love" charitable arm has donated over $300 million to national and local charities. Subaru proved that marketing to your loyalists can grow a brand faster than chasing everyone.
15. Kia: "Give It Everything," Super Bowl 2019. Kia used a 90-second Super Bowl spot to launch the Telluride SUV and reposition the entire brand. The ad featured real residents of West Point, Georgia, where the Telluride is manufactured, rather than actors or celebrities. It was a deliberate move to shed Kia's low-cost reputation and emphasize American craftsmanship. The Telluride went on to win World Car of the Year, North American Utility Vehicle of the Year, and MotorTrend SUV of the Year in its first year. The campaign's authenticity-first approach, spotlighting workers rather than the product, marked a turning point in Kia's brand perception, helping push the brand's U.S. average transaction price up significantly in subsequent years.
16. Jeep: "Groundhog Day," Super Bowl 2020. Jeep recruited Bill Murray to reprise his role from the 1993 film Groundhog Day for a 60-second Gladiator spot that aired during Super Bowl LIV on Groundhog Day, February 2, 2020, according to Stellantis. The spot showed Murray reliving the same day over and over, but this time choosing adventure in a Jeep Gladiator pickup. Jeep reported 104,246,754 views across its social channels, the most of any 2020 Super Bowl commercial by Jeep's count, and the spot ranked first in USA Today's Ad Meter among 62 commercials, according to Jeep's February 2020 release. In May 2025, voters in Campaign US's Campaign Cup 2025 named it the Best American Ad of the 21st Century, according to Stellantis. The campaign showed that nostalgia, paired with the right talent and a date that matched the joke, can still stop viewers in mass-market advertising.
17. Ram: "Farmer," Super Bowl 2013. Ram Trucks aired a two-minute Super Bowl spot using Paul Harvey's iconic 1978 "So God Made a Farmer" speech, set against still photographs of American farm life. No product demo. No celebrity. No dialogue beyond Harvey's voice. The ad was the most-shared Super Bowl commercial of 2013 and won Nielsen's Auto Ad of the Year in 2014. Ram truck sales surged 20% in the months following the Super Bowl, and the spot helped Ram gain ground on the F-150 and Silverado. The campaign showed that the right archival audio, paired with restraint and visual simplicity, could outperform multimillion-dollar productions in the most competitive advertising environment on earth.
EV Disruptors
18. Tesla: Owner Referral Program, through 2024. Tesla used owner referral links as a sales channel, rewarding owners and buyers with prizes and credits. Kelley Blue Book reports that top referrers were once eligible for a free Roadster, Electrek reports that Tesla reduced the prizes in 2019, and Tesla ended vehicle referral awards on September 18, 2021. Drive Tesla Canada reported that referral costs had reached more than $23 million in the first quarter of 2021 alone. Tesla's support page says a smaller program ran from March 27, 2023 to April 30, 2024, and Electrek reported that Tesla shut it down in all markets on that date. The case shows both the pull of owner advocacy and its cost: an incentive paid per referral grows with success. See also EPR's Tesla marketing strategy and Tesla PR strategy analyses.
19. Rivian: R1T Launch and IPO, 2021. Rivian priced its November 2021 IPO at $78 a share, raising $11.9 billion at a valuation of about $66.5 billion, according to CNBC and Fortune, and Fortune called it the largest U.S. IPO since Facebook in 2012. The stock closed its first day of trading at a market value of just under $100 billion, according to The Driven. The R1T was the first electric pickup truck to reach customers, beating Ford, GM, and Tesla to market. Rivian's marketing centered on adventure storytelling: beautifully shot footage of the R1T on trails, at campsites, and in national parks, distributed across social media and digital channels. Amazon's massive investment and a 100,000-unit delivery van order provided credibility. The company spent modestly on traditional advertising but invested heavily in community building and experiential events. Rivian delivered roughly 50,000 vehicles in 2023 and launched the mass-market R2 in 2024, proving that a startup can build a premium brand without a legacy ad budget.
20. Lucid Motors: "Dream Ahead" Launch, 2021 to 2022. Lucid positioned the Air sedan as the anti-Tesla luxury EV, targeting buyers who wanted performance without the controversy. The company's marketing leaned on third-party validation: the Air won MotorTrend's 2022 Car of the Year and held the EPA range record at 520 miles. Lucid invested in high-end experiential marketing through branded studios in premium retail locations and targeted digital campaigns aimed at luxury conquest buyers. The brand spent an estimated $100 million on marketing in its first two full years. Lucid delivered approximately 6,000 vehicles in 2023, modest volume but at an average transaction price above $100,000, proving that a startup could credibly enter the ultra-luxury EV space with precision marketing and product-led positioning.
21. BYD: Global Expansion Campaign, 2023 to present. BYD, China's largest EV maker, launched its international marketing blitz in 2023, spending aggressively on brand awareness in Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. The company became an official partner of UEFA Euro 2024, securing stadium branding and broadcast exposure across dozens of countries. BYD overtook Tesla in global EV sales in Q4 2023, selling 3.03 million battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles for the full year. The company's marketing playbook mirrors the Korean automakers' strategy from two decades earlier: sports sponsorships, local manufacturing investments, and aggressive pricing to build familiarity before moving upmarket. BYD's 2024 global sales exceeded 4.27 million vehicles, and the brand now sells in more than 70 countries, the fastest international automotive expansion in modern history.
Iconic One-Offs and Cultural Moments
22. Volvo Trucks: "The Epic Split," 2013. Jean-Claude Van Damme performed a full split between two reversing Volvo FM trucks to demonstrate the precision of Volvo Dynamic Steering. The ad, created by Forsman & Bodenfors and directed by Andreas Nilsson, was released on November 14, 2013, and the stunt was recorded in a single take. Volvo Trucks reported that the film passed 60 million views, 6 million shares and nearly $100 million in media value within weeks, a valuation that is Volvo's own estimate. Fast Company reported that the full Live Tests series generated more than 100 million YouTube views by May 2014, and The One Club named the film Best of Show in 2014. The Drum noted an estimate that the campaign cost $3 million to $4 million to produce and generated $170 million in revenue for Volvo. It promoted trucks to fleet buyers but spread to a consumer audience, showing that B2B marketing can reach consumers when the idea is bold enough.
23. Dodge: "Man's Last Stand," Super Bowl 2010. Wieden+Kennedy's Charger campaign debuted during Super Bowl XLIV in February 2010, according to Adweek. Michael C. Hall, best known as the title character of Dexter, voiced a montage of men staring blankly at the camera while listing the compromises of their day, and the spot positioned the Charger as the man's last stand. An Adweek in-game commentator said the ad veered into "American Psycho territory," and Fansided later ranked it among the worst Super Bowl ads, so the reception split sharply. This page has not verified a sales effect for the campaign. It remains a case study in how a polarizing ad can dominate conversation.
24. Mini Cooper: "Let's Motor," 2002 to 2008. When BMW relaunched Mini in the United States in 2002, the brand had near-zero market presence. The launch campaign, created by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, rejected every convention of automotive advertising: no TV spots, no highway billboards, no dealer incentives. Instead, Mini mounted cars on top of SUVs and drove them through city streets. It placed Minis inside stadiums as seats. It ran print ads in magazines with cardboard foldout cutouts of the car. The guerrilla approach generated outsized media coverage and helped Mini sell out its first full year of U.S. production, roughly 25,000 units, with a marketing budget estimated at just $20 million, a fraction of what traditional automakers spent. The campaign proved that a tiny budget and unconventional tactics could launch a brand in the world's most competitive market.
25. Chrysler: "Imported from Detroit," Super Bowl 2011. Chrysler launched its "Imported from Detroit" campaign with "Born of Fire," a two-minute Super Bowl XLV spot on February 6, 2011 in which Eminem drives a Chrysler 200 through Detroit, according to Crain's Detroit. Wieden+Kennedy created the spot, and Crain's reported that it was the longest commercial to air in a Super Bowl and cost an estimated $9 million to $10 million to produce and air. NPR reported 3.7 million YouTube views within days of the game, and Crain's later reported nearly 14 million views on Chrysler's channel. The spot won YouTube's Ad Blitz vote, according to Google's agency blog, and Autoblog reported that "Chrysler 200" was the second most searched term on Google on Super Bowl Sunday. NPR also cited The Wall Street Journal's report of a spike in online shopping for Chrysler models. The campaign showed that a city origin story, told with restraint, can sell a car and a brand at once.
The Four Patterns
Pattern one: Pre-release changes the math. Volkswagen's "The Force" showed that releasing a Super Bowl ad online before the game can build the audience before the broadcast: Deutsch reports more than 13 million YouTube views before it aired, and Adweek reports that pre-release became regular practice for marketers after 2011.
Pattern two: Empathy outperforms aspiration in a crisis. Hyundai's Assurance program, Subaru's Love platform, and Ram's "Farmer" all succeeded by meeting consumers where they actually live (anxious, loyal, or proud) rather than projecting an aspirational lifestyle. These campaigns generated disproportionate results because they felt authentic at moments when audiences were primed to reject anything that felt manufactured. For the other side of the ledger, read failed automotive marketing campaigns and what they teach, and see how Jaguar's Copy Nothing rebrand and Mitsubishi's fuel economy scandal played out.
Pattern three: Product-as-spectacle replaces product-on-road. Volvo's "Epic Split," BMW's "The Hire," and Porsche's Tesla-screen targeting all found ways to make the product itself the spectacle, through cinematic stunt, Hollywood production values, or precision digital targeting. None of these campaigns showed a car driving down a winding mountain road with a voiceover listing horsepower figures. The product demonstration was embedded in the entertainment.
Pattern four: Owned channels beat rented ones. Tesla's referral program, Nissan's long-running ESPN partnership, and Rivian's community-first approach all demonstrate that durable automotive brands build owned audiences rather than renting attention through media buys. Referral programs, branded content series, and experiential events can compound in a way a 30-second spot cannot, although Tesla's referral costs show that an incentive channel needs a cost ceiling. See the automotive digital marketing case studies for sourced results on seven of these campaigns, and Which Car Brands Have the Best PR? for how the brands rank by segment.
The AI-Era Layer
Every campaign on this list now operates in a fundamentally different information environment. When a consumer asks an AI assistant (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude) "What was the best automotive marketing campaign?" or "How did Hyundai handle the 2009 recession?", the AI retrieves, synthesizes, and cites. It does not show a banner ad. It does not run a pre-roll. It answers the question, and the answer is built from the indexed, structured, cited content that exists about these campaigns.
This means the brands with the deepest, most frequently cited body of campaign documentation (case studies, press releases, trade coverage, award submissions) are the ones that show up in AI-generated answers. Volkswagen's "The Force" has detailed retrospectives from Adweek and Ad Age, and Tesla's referral program is documented by outlets such as Electrek and Kelley Blue Book.
The brands that buried their campaign results in gated PDFs, failed to publish case studies, or relied on ephemeral social content are now invisible in AI retrieval. The new competitive moat in automotive marketing is not just running a great campaign. It is ensuring that the campaign's story, metrics, and strategic rationale are published, structured, and citable across the open web. The campaigns that get cited by AI engines are the ones that exist as durable, indexable, fact-rich content. Everything else disappears into the void.
The same mechanism now governs pricing and safety answers, not just campaign history. 5WPR's Automotive AI Retrieval Rankings study found that Kelley Blue Book, Edmunds, NHTSA, and IIHS anchor most AI-generated answers about vehicles above the campaigns and editorial coverage listed here, because those sources publish structured, dated data rather than narrative. A marketing team that wins the campaign-history layer described above still needs a separate strategy for the pricing-and-safety layer; 5WPR breaks down what that looks like in how automotive brands win AI search citations.
Brand marketing and PR pairs: BMW Marketing Strategy · BMW PR Strategy · Tesla Marketing Strategy · Tesla PR Strategy · Mercedes-Benz Marketing Strategy · Toyota Marketing Strategy · Toyota Public Relations · Ford Public Relations
Which Car Brands Have the Best PR? A Segment Ranking
Automotive PR: OEM Strategies, Agencies and Recalls
Automotive PR Agencies and Firms: 2026 Specialists, Costs
Automotive Marketing Strategy: The 2026 Playbook
Automotive Digital Marketing Case Studies: 7 Campaigns
Porsche Marketing Strategy: Campaigns, Formula & AI-Era Playbook
Premium Auto Brand Management: Ferrari to Lamborghini
Jaguar's Copy Nothing Rebrand: Backlash, Sales and Type 01
Mitsubishi Fuel Economy Scandal: PR Lessons From 2016
All Marketing Campaigns coverage
Digital Marketing Coverage at Everything-PR
Public Relations Coverage at Everything-PR
5WPR's Automotive Marketing and PR Agency Practice
Last updated: October 12, 2026.
