Cars.com sought to build cultural credibility and reach women at pivotal life moments, showcasing how the car shopping marketplace fuels "what's next." As the #1 book club for women with an audience of 5.3M+, 7x the awareness and 10x the engagement of competitors, Reese's Book Club is more than a destination for book lovers—it's where reading becomes culture and inspiration becomes action.
Partnering with Reese's Book Club aligned Cars.com with a highly engaged, influential audience: 89% are primary household purchase decision-makers, 90% are go-to sources for recommendations among friends and family, and 61% agree RBC influences the brands and products they consider. Our goal was to transform the community's passion into awareness and trust for Cars.com, inspiring women to embrace their next chapters and explore the marketplace with confidence.
Together, we created "Next Chapter Chats" authentic conversations demonstrating the limitless possibilities when women shape their futures. By bringing Reese's Book Club's unparalleled storytelling into online and offline spaces, we allowed audiences to experience Cars.com in a unique, organic way through the lens of beloved RBC host Danielle Robay and iconic RBC authors Raegan Revord, Tembi Locke, and Rainbow Rowell.
This cohesive ecosystem was designed to fuel women's next chapters with clarity, confidence, and joy, connecting Cars.com to meaningful life transitions through storytelling and community engagement that elevated the brand, positioning it as transformation not transaction.
At the core of this campaign was a powerful idea: cars are more than vehicles — they are catalysts for life’s next chapters. By pairing Cars.com with the storytelling power of Reese’s Book Club, we created a campaign that reframed the car-buying journey through the lens of inspiration, possibility, and personal evolution. Our goal was to meet women where their imaginations already thrive and show them how Cars.com could support the transitions that shape their lives.
Next Chapter Chats: Our Hero Content Series
We centered the campaign around Next Chapter Chats, a narrative-driven social series featuring Danielle Robay, host of RBC's podcast Bookmarked, in conversation with Reese’s Book Club authors Raegan Revord, Tembi Locke, and Rainbow Rowell. Each episode unfolded as an intimate ride-along, using the car as a storytelling space where authors reflected on reinvention, courage, and the chapters ahead. This format allowed us to humanize the car-buying experience, positioning Cars.com not as a transactional platform, but as a companion on the road to what comes next.
Features in Focus: Complementary Storytelling with Functional Depth
Supporting our hero series, Features in Focus extended the Cars.com narrative into short-form, utility-driven content. These assets highlighted the tools, filters, and resources that empower shoppers to buy with confidence. Designed to complement the Next Chapter Chats, this series created a seamless bridge between emotional storytelling and practical action.
An Experiential Extension at Shine Away
We brought the partnership offline at Shine Away, Hello Sunshine’s flagship tentpole. We created an interactive “Next Chapter” story wall that invited attendees to write and share their life’s next chapter title. The digital installation rotated each chapter title, and paired with a fireside chat on the main stage (1,800+ attendees), transformed the emotional themes of our content series into a tactile, community-driven moment. It offered women a space to reflect, connect, and feel supported in whatever chapter they were beginning.
Extending the Story Across the RBC Ecosystem
To ensure cohesion and discoverability, the campaign extended across Reese’s Book Club’s newsletter, social channels, and editorial ecosystem. Each touchpoint reinforced the partnership’s message: Cars.com is here to make the next chapter feel clear, confident, and exciting.
What Made the Work Unique
By blending intimate storytelling, empowerment, and community-centered experiences, the campaign reimagined how a partner can show up for women. Cars.com was woven into the emotional fabric of Reese’s Book Club, not through ads, through stories, conversations, and shared moments of possibility. The result was a campaign that felt human, modern, and deeply resonant, transforming the journey to a new car into a journey toward a new chapter
The Cars.com x Reese’s Book Club partnership delivered meaningful, measurable impact across every key objective, from brand perception to audience connection to purchase-driven outcomes. By meeting women in moments of inspiration and translating those emotions into action, the campaign shifted how they related to Cars.com and the car-buying journey overall.
Across the full ecosystem, the work generated 72.3M+ impressions and 64.7M+ views, creating broad awareness within a highly influential audience. But even more importantly, it changed how women felt about the brand. The campaign drove a 23-point lift in familiarity, a 25-point lift in brand consideration, and a 20-point lift in purchase intent, outperforming Hello Sunshine and industry benchmarks, demonstrating that storytelling meaningfully influences consumer behavior.
Our hero series, Next Chapter Chats, resonated deeply with the Reese’s Book Club community, elevating Cars.com within a trusted storytelling environment that women use to guide decisions in their daily lives. The complementary Features in Focus assets ensured those emotional connections translated into pragmatic pathways to shop — reinforcing confidence and clarity around the car-buying process.
At Shine Away, Cars.com became the #2 most recognized brand across the entire event, validating the power of an experiential extension to transform brand awareness into community affinity.
Taken together, these results reflect a partnership that didn’t just market a service — it reimagined a category through humanity, storytelling, and cultural relevance. The work succeeded because it met women where they are and empowered them to approach their next chapters with confidence.