The Inter-Industry Conference on Auto Collision Repair (I-CAR) announced its Collision Careers platform launched its first-ever digital advertising campaign aimed at attracting high potential talent to the industry and showcasing the benefits of a career in collision repair to solve a talent crisis that is estimated to be 100,000 skilled technicians short.
The campaign features a series of fast, engaging videos such as the one embedded below themed “Bolt Ahead with Collision Careers.”
Additional videos are available on the Collision Careers YouTube channel.
“The launch of this first-of-its-kind campaign is a natural next step on the critical work I-CAR has undertaken through its Collision Careers program to attract talent to the industry and to illustrate the benefits of this stable, growing, innovative career journey,” said Dara Goroff, Vice President of Planning and Industry Talent Programming. “This campaign lays the foundation for Collision Careers to begin pursuing promotional partnerships across the industry to help us more broadly reach the public with consistent messaging that positions the collision repair industry as the trade of choice.”
The campaign, developed in strategic collaboration with full-service ad agency Push 22, will run this first-wave primarily on YouTube and is designed to target both students and parents. The videos will initially run in several major markets, including Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Philadelphia, which were chosen for their high need for talent, proximity to strong collision repair school programs and shops, and ability to reach the target demographic.
Collision Careers will expand its campaign later this year with opportunities for like-minded talent concerned organizations and marketing leaders across the industry to partner on content and develop co-op advertising campaigns to further promote career paths in collision repair.
“We are taking a very current consumer marketing approach and applying it to an industry that has never approached positioning itself in this way to attract talent,” adds Arianna Sherlock, Senior Director of Marketing at I-CAR. “There is a tremendous amount of competition for GenZ’s attention. We’re not just competing against other trades or colleges. We’re competing against all of the digital content they consume so it’s imperative we meet them where they are and stand out.”