The authority on city living
ZIPCAR CONSUMER SUMMER CAMPAIGN
THE OPPORTUNITY:
Build top-of-mind awareness with Zipcar's high-value urban audience through a bold, memorable summer campaign.
THE THINKING:
We knew our audience well—smart, city-native and convenience-driven. What we needed was a way in that felt like true to them. So instead of selling Zipcar's benefits, we leaned into something more relatable: the quiet absurdity of owning a car in a city. Everyone who lives there knows it. We just gave it a voice.
THE STRATEGY:
Establish Zipcar as the smart authority on car-free city living.
THE CREATIVE IDEA:
Zip if
An irreverent look at the everyday headaches of owning a car in the city. With smart humor, we turned those pain points into relatable reasons to zip instead. Building on our established illustration style and pairing it with quippy, city-savvy lines, we created a distinctive campaign platform that felt both memorable and uniquely Zipcar.
MY ROLE:
Our agency partner came in with a good idea that wasn't quite Zipcar yet. I pushed it toward something more ownable—tightening the voice, leaning harder into the illustration style we'd already built equity in, sharpening the humor so it felt city-smart rather than broadly funny. From there I guided its evolution across OOH, paid media, and member channels over multiple years, using performance data to keep it fresh without losing what made it work.
WHAT WE DID:
We started in a few cities intentionally so we could test and learn before we scaled.
OOH kept Zipcar visible during peak summer season while paid media and member comms educated on the why and when of using Zipcar.
When member engagement came in soft, we didn't scrap the approach. We added local recommendations and watched engagement climb.
Collaborating with an illustration + animation studio to kept the storytelling clear so we could push the visuals to be more memorable and abstract.
Kept teams aligned from early strategy through rollout, making sure the work stayed consistent and fresh.
THE IMPACT:
Stayed top of mind
Unaided brand recall up 100%.
Aided recall up 81%.
Unaided awareness up 75%; Aided up 28%.
Memorable ads
68% of people exposed had improved perceptions of Zipcar, and purchase intent lifted 77%.
Inspired trips
Local additions to the emails were immediately successful. A third of members said it inspired them to book a trip. 74% found it helpful. 24% reported actually taking the suggest trip that month.
“If you have errands then there is a Zipcar option to get it done.”
–Brand lift survey participant
