CARSTAR Soaps It Up

CARSTAR’s Soaps It Up for Cystic Fibrosis car wash was developed to generate brand awareness for CARSTAR, as well as to give customers a reason to visit a collision store without having been in an accident. The program also sees all proceeds split between local community groups and Cystic Fibrosis Canada.

The challenge for 2012 was to create an event that was newsworthy and exciting for attendees and franchise partners alike. The team decided to move forward with the theme of declaring the dirty car an object of beauty and commissioning world-renowned “dirty car artist” Scott Wade to transform dirty cars into works of art.  Scott’s work was featured at a one-of-a-kind single-day exhibit in Toronto, prior to the carwash day, and franchise partners across the country were invited to emulate Wade’s work by featuring their own dirty car art during their carwash.

During the day the Dirty Car Art exhibit was open to the press, while at night social media influencers were invited to attend a party in honour of the Dirt Car Art exhibit. These influencers were asked to blog, tweet, and share photos of the event. If they did, $10 per mention would be donated to Cystic Fibrosis Canada (up to a maximum of $2500).

A website was also created to advertise the events, make online donations, buy advanced tickets, and provide event locations and details. POS kits were developed and sent to each participating location, and press releases were developed and distributed to local media for each event across Canada.

Tickets for the event were sold for a minimum donation of $5 and offered the chance to win one of 100 prizes. They also received 5 bonus AIR MILES reward miles with every $5 ticket.

Overall the program was very successful despite poor weather conditions on the day of the car wash, raising over $100,000 and washing over 4000 cars.