Love your car?

You might love it more if your GPS navigator had the sassy attitude of the one featured in the latest campaign from Autotrader.ca, a classifieds-style website for buying and selling vehicles.

Currently in 15 markets across Canada, the radio ads feature the female voice of a GPS navigation system giving a driver increasingly suggestive directions: ‘Turn left. Turn right. Left. Right. Not too fast, big boy. Nice and slow…’ There is also a version featuring a male GPS navigation voice. Creative on the campaign was handled by John St. in Toronto, and media was handled by PHD, also in Toronto.

The brand has used radio before but not in quite a long time, Stéphane Marceau, CMO, Yellowpages Group, tells MiC, adding that it is a ‘perfect’ medium for reaching potential car buyers.

‘Many radio listeners spend a lot of time in their cars,’ Marceau says. ‘Since they drive a car, they are also potential car buyers, so for us it was the perfect medium.’

The target for the campaign is mainly male, 18 to 50 with a younger skew, but Autotrader is looking to broaden its reach to females. The radio buy has been targeted toward stations that have a strong male listenership, with a secondary skew toward females.

In market for three weeks now, the campaign has already been deemed a success by the company, Marceau says. With an average of two million unique visitors monthly, the website has experienced a 26% boost in first-time visitor traffic since the campaign launched.

The campaign will be expanded to include an online component later this fall.