Tina from Turners is back... with a song

Turners has released the next instalment in the wildly successful Tina from Turners campaign.

The ad follows Tina and her cars as she travels across New Zealand, singing her earworm of a song Sell Us Your Car.

“The new campaign is a celebration of the place that Tina has come to hold in the New Zealand psyche – which I don’t claim lightly,” says general marketing manager Sean Wiggans.

“While we were out filming, the love was obvious with the amount of people coming up to get selfies or just to talk to Tina. Wherever we went people noticed and wanted to come and say hello. Or sometimes they just yelled out ‘Cars! Cars! Cars!‘ or ‘Beep beep’ on their way past. It was a little bit like being with a celebrity.”

Watch this video on YouTube

The previous campaign is credited with helping Turners Auto Retail double their profit in just three years.

It also won a slew of marketing and advertising awards – including the Supreme Marketing Award in 2022, Excellence for Long-Term Strategy at the 2024 Marketing Awards and Sustained Success at the 2024 Advertising Effectiveness Awards (EFFIEs).

New campaign, same dream team

Following up a successful campaign can be a daunting task. But the team was confident they had the right people to do it justice, says Wiggans.

“We’ve got a very nice model running since we did the first campaign. The marketing team at Turners do a lot of work in-house, but we bring in brilliant partners for the big stuff, especially if we’re using Tina.

“We’ve continued to work very well with Darryl Parsons and Olivia Woodroffe, who delivered the first campaign with Steve Saussey directing,” Wiggans adds.

“Darryl and Olivia have since set up their own agency, So – but the dynamic hasn’t changed. They are as much a part of our team as the rest of us.

“Over the years they have brought in Paul Jones, who did all the original stills for several projects. We’ve also always enjoyed working with him, so he was a natural to film it.

“And of course the incredible Bubbah (Sieni Leo’o Olo) returned to reprise her role as Tina. On the media front, while a chunk of the digital media sits in-house, the very smart crew at Lassoo Media do the rest of it,” says Wiggans.

The new ad leans into the personality of Tina from Turners. It builds on the work that has been done before, he adds.

Tina’s jingle celebrates New Zealand

“Towards the end of 2023, Darryl wrote a brilliant radio ad – basically a 90-second song,” Wiggans explains.

“It celebrated Tina and cars among New Zealand celebrities, events and places. It also had a very strong message to ‘sell us your car’. The ad delivered a sustained lift in leads for us and got a lot of people talking.

“At the time we discussed putting pictures to it, but 2024 was not a year for spending production money unnecessarily. By the end of the year, things were starting to turn. The current campaign had been in market for nearly four years,” Wiggans continues.

“It was time to take it to another level. We talked about a bunch of different things that had been achieved and what we needed to do next.”

The more we discussed it, the clearer it became. The ‘song’ had the potential to deliver the next big leap for Tina, he adds.

“It was time to make a music video of a New Zealand Roadtrip – a very ambitious task within our budget. And while I’m obviously biased, I think the result is bloody brilliant. The team have done an amazing job,” says Wiggans.