More than just a listing
Selling a car can be daunting. If you list it privately on Facebook Marketplace or eBay, you have to deal with scams and random people coming to your house. That goes triple for a luxury car when curiosity inspires window shopping, at your inconvenience.
A woman we know only as Diane approached the car auction site, Bring a Trailer, to sell her 1986 Porsche 911. Purchased by media conglomerate Hearst in 2020, BaT hosted 45,000 auctions and total sales exceeding $1.5 billion in 2024, even in a crowded market. Owners submit their cars and motorcycles to the site, and BaT picks the ones it finds most interesting to sell. Diane’s Sahara Beige 1986 Porsche 911 Carrera Coupe fit the bill, and the auction site started brainstorming with her to create a selling strategy.
The timing was excellent: the F1 race in Las Vegas was coming up, and the team brainstormed ideas about how to capitalize on the opportunity to market the classic Porsche to a friendly audience.
Guerrilla throwback marketing tactics
Finished in paint-to-sample Sahara Beige, the 1986 Porsche 911 Carrera coupe was built with a limited-slip differential, sport seats, 16-inch Fuchs wheels, front and rear spoilers, an electric sunroof, a short shifter, and sport shocks. It’s powered by a 3.2-liter flat-six good for 202 horsepower and 185 lb-ft of torque, paired with a 915 five-speed manual transmission. It even has a CD player for 1980s bangers like “Broken Wings” by Mr. Mister and “You Give Love a Bad Name” by Bon Jovi. With only 64,000 miles on the clock, the Porsche was mint.
Together with PMG, Hearst’s creative and media agency, BaT had launched a campaign called It’s Never Just a Car back in June. This campaign was created with the idea that enthusiasts value the stories behind each vehicle, the culture built up around them, and the feeling drivers get when they’re behind the wheel beyond the machine itself. Building momentum from that, BaT and PMG nurtured a marketing bonanza with layers of stories for Diane’s Porsche.
It didn’t require a massive budget either, as the team employed guerrilla marketing and PR tactics to spark curiosity and conversation. That included sign spinners on the street, paper signs around town, tear-off posters, walking billboards, stickers, newsstands, chalk stencils, and even a sponsorship of a local bowling team: The Diane’s Cars.
The methods were on brand with the era when the Porsche was built, when life wasn’t nearly as focused on technology. It’s not a throwback, however, but a savvy way to tap into the crowds at F1 in a way that would catch their attention.
Why it worked
The result? You couldn’t visit F1 in Vegas without seeing the campaign, says a spokesperson for Bring a Trailer.
“Bring a Trailer is a unique presence in the world of automotive enthusiasm, so bringing a campaign to life in Las Vegas had to be uniquely suited to our brand,” says Lindsay Horrigan, consumer growth officer for Hearst Magazines. “When we thought about the best way to represent Bring a Trailer and appeal to new fans and enthusiasts who didn’t already know and love us, we knew we had to just be ourselves: understated, trustworthy, direct, and information-forward. That’s why the ‘Buy Diane’s Car’ campaign worked.”
A quick search from the classic car experts at Hagerty shows that a Concours condition 1986 Porsche 911 Carrera will sell for, on average, $95,000. At the end of the auction, Diane’s car sold for $106,500. Not too shabby for a cadre of sign spinners, sign hangers, and walking billboards.
