TVC & OOH: “Skip the rental counter” (Turo 2024-2025)

OOH

In the first half of 2024, we concepted, tested, and launched an out-of-home (OOH) campaign in Philadelphia, blanketing the city and airport with Turo ads. We leveraged a creative testing tool, Zappi, to glean insights and inform our creative decisionmaking, and only advertised in a single market to track the impact of brand advertising on gross booking value (GBV), making this campaign our most data-driven and performance-oriented brand campaign ever.

After a successful run (Philly continues to be one of our fastest-growing markets), we then rolled out the “Skip the rental counter” OOH campaign nationwide, appearing in several major airports and cities in Q4 2024. We also ran the campaign digitally, including in United Airlines in-flight entertainment placements.

In 2025, we ran this campaign again in major airports and cities across the US, and adapted the campaign for use in Canada as well. We also started running in-flight entertainments ads with Southwest Airlines, and adapted the creative to run in Canada ahead of the busy summer season.

Credits

Photographer: Jeff Ludes

Creative directors: Megan Natt, Ericka Ames

Copywriters: Megan Natt, Ranen Parry

Art Directors: Ericka Ames, Sam Hensley

Designers: Jackie Brown, Sam Hensley, Eric Steele, Andrew Sampson

TVC

Invigorated by the strong performance of the out-of-campaign in 2024, we decided to adapt the “Skip the rental counter” concept into a TV spot to diversify our media buy and drive awareness and action ahead of the summer 2025 travel season.

We started by taking the brief and concepting multiple potential stories and executions to transform the ethos of the OOH campaign into video format (“we” being me and my creative partner). We then pitched four concepts to an internal working group, including the CMO and VP of Brand Marketing. We skinnied the options down from four to three, incorporating all relevant feedback, and engaged our production partner, SixTwentySix, to help us storyboard them out for testing.

Instead of static storyboards, we created three distinct animatics to test the concepts in a higher fidelity way (what an interesting experience this was!), and dropped those into our creative testing tool, Zappi. We emerged with a clear winner — “Technicolor dreams” — which exceeded our target score. We then engaged with director Nolan Goff who helped make the concept into a shiny, polished, cinematic spot, and got deep into pre-production. After a successful two-day shoot in Barcelona (shooting abroad actually saved us a lot of budget to direct toward post), we emerged with a finished spot in just under five months.

Press coverage

The “Skip the rental counter” campaign went live on June 2, 2025 and was covered in AdAge's Creativity Roundup — Campaigns You Need to Know About Today — “The mundane, colorless process of renting a car becomes a colorful, cinematic experience with Turo in a campaign for the rental platform”. It was also featured in SixTwentySix’s newsletter, where they characterize it: “Our latest spot for Turo flips the airport rental nightmare into a bold, cinematic journey. What starts in rental counter chaos transforms into freedom on the open road, with each transition building momentum. The result is a visual metaphor for how effortless travel can feel with Turo.”

The press release was also picked up by Adobo Magazine: “Following the success of their award-winning brand campaign “Open the Door to Extraordinary,” car sharing marketplace Turo has once again partnered with creative studio SixTwentySix for a bold new marketing initiative, this time with a direct-response focus. Written by Turo Creative Directors Ericka Ames and Megan Natt, and directed by Nolan Goff, the new campaign, “Technicolor Dreams,” reimagines the mundane traditional car rental experience as a cinematic journey filled with color, freedom, and possibility.”

Credits

Director: Nolan Goff

Creative directors: Megan Natt, Ericka Ames

Copywriter: Megan Natt

Art Director: Ericka Ames

Director of Photography: Jenna Hukkison

Producers: Cole Sanchez (SixTwentySix), Estevan Padilla (Turo)