The challenge: Reach car lovers beyond Bring a Trailer's core community at F1 Las Vegas without buying a sponsorship.
- 220% lift in Google searches for Bring a Trailer in Las Vegas during F1 week.
- 70% more new Vegas visitors to the site, who spent more than two minutes browsing.
- QR scans at 2.6x to 4.3x the benchmark. The billboard truck scanned at 0.13% against a 0.03% to 0.05% norm for public OOH.
- 4x the benchmark sale price. Diane's Porsche 911 sold far above its expected value.
- One view of every channel. Alli tracked OOH, paid social, and site visits together during and after the event.
Reaching car culture without losing authenticity
Car people are always looking at cars. They browse, compare, argue, daydream, and every so often, they bid. Bring a Trailer built that habit into a loyal, highly engaged community and the leading online auction for collector and enthusiast vehicles. There were still plenty of car lovers outside that community to reach.
Formula 1 brought a global crowd of car fans, press, and high-value consumers to Las Vegas. It also brought the world's biggest automotive and luxury brands, with huge sponsorships and polished experiences. The race weekend was everything Bring a Trailer isn't: flashy, extravagant, and very expensive.
Bring a Trailer needed to reach that crowd without acting like every other brand in town or losing the authenticity its community values. The goal was to introduce more people to its auction experience through something real: a car people could find, talk about, follow, and bid on.
Refusing to be flashy
The insight was simple. Enthusiasts connect with cars and the stories behind them, not with marketing. So PMG counter-programmed the race. While other brands went big and glossy, Bring a Trailer focused on one real person, one real car, and one live auction anyone could join.
The creative used the plain language of a personal classified ad. That turned the auction into a small mystery playing out across the city: who's Diane, and why is her car everywhere?
Every touchpoint was designed to work as both a brand moment and a measurable signal. Alli let the team see how each piece contributed to engagement across channels.
A citywide, deliberately low-tech takeover
PMG filled Las Vegas with Diane's car. Three hero digital billboards ran along the Strip. A billboard truck with a QR code drove the city, joined by walking billboards and sign spinners. Sidewalk stencils, tear-off posters, newsstand takeovers, stickers, and coasters showed up wherever race fans went.
A 12-page newsprint zine gave enthusiasts the full specs on the car. Bring a Trailer even sponsored a local bowling team, The Diane's Cars. Targeted paid social connected the physical campaign to the online auction.
Alli was the activation's measurement hub. It brought OOH and paid social performance into one view, tracked site visits during and after the event, and surfaced findings that improved how future brand activations will be measured.
Curiosity that turned into action
It worked as intended. You couldn't experience F1 in Vegas without running into Diane, and that curiosity turned into action.
Google searches for Bring a Trailer in Las Vegas rose 220% during F1 week, and new Vegas visitors to the site rose 70%. Once they arrived, they spent more than two minutes browsing on average, so people didn't just notice the brand. They went looking for it.
The listing drew 11,226 sessions. The billboard truck's QR code scanned at 0.13%, well above the 0.03% to 0.05% benchmark for public out-of-home, and paid social reached 537,000 people with 1.62 million impressions at a $20 CPM.
And the ending wrote itself. Diane's Porsche 911 sold at four times the original benchmark. One real listing had become a brand platform for Bring a Trailer, driving awareness, search, site engagement, and auction bids.
