01 · 2025
Kelley Blue Book
Fuel for Legends, a centennial campaign that repositions a category icon for the next generation of car buyers.
- Client
- Kelley Blue Book
- Role
- Market Analyst
- Year
- 2025
- Platforms
- Illustrator, Photoshop, Figma, Google Slides, Google Forms, Google Docs
Campaign Overview
To celebrate Kelley Blue Book's 100th anniversary, the challenge was not only to honor its legacy, it was to reposition the brand for the next generation of car buyers.
Fuel for Legends blended education with entertainment to make car buying feel accessible, transparent, and culturally relevant for Gen Z audiences. The work moved KBB from category authority toward cultural relevance, without losing the trust the brand has spent a century earning.
From assumption to evidence.
Rather than guess at a Gen Z audience, the campaign was built on primary research, a survey designed to surface behaviors, motivations, media habits, and the real drivers behind a vehicle purchase, well beyond surface opinion.
Cleaner, more modern, more confident.
The refreshed system was designed to feel more aligned with how today's drivers expect a trusted automotive guide to look, modern, restrained, and confident enough to host a centennial moment without leaning on nostalgia alone.
Meet Kelley.
Survey insights and behavioral data both pointed to a desire for guidance that feels conversational rather than corporate. Kelley emerged as a personified voice for the brand, someone Gen Z could relate to, ask questions of, and trust through the most expensive decision most of them will make this decade.
A campaign that meets people where they are.
Output spanned an edutainment content engine, influencer partnerships and user generated content, short form comedic social, OOH placements, and in person experiential activations, a system flexible enough to feel native on every surface it ran.
