Ennis designed a new advertising system for premium car auction Barrett-Jackson. He achieved the strategic goals of increasing appeal to younger, culturally-savvy consumers, and highlighting an emerging revenue stream for the company.
Select accomplishments:
🏎️ Ennis solved the issue of the current style feeling too dark by designing a vibrant visual system spotlighting Barrett-Jackson’s colorful cars.
🏎️ Ennis wrote all copy in the direction, driving viewers to bid on a car and highlighting Thrill Rides, an emerging source of revenue for Barrett-Jackson
Barrett-Jackson
Car Auctions
Designing a Campaign That Brings in a New Crowd Without Alienating the OGs
As design lead, Ennis crafted a bold new creative direction for Barrett-Jackson that celebrates the brand’s heritage while driving it into the future. It was important not to alienate the customer base, which skewed older, as he brought in a younger audience. His high-craft solution was inspired by midcentury print advertisements with lots of white space and strong copy.
To bring viewers’ attention directly to the product and messaging, he devised a system featuring a succinct line, an attention-grabbing image of a car sold at Barrett-Jackson, all on a subtly grainy backdrop in a custom color inspired by the car’s paint job. Ennis evoked beautiful ads of the past with this system (speaking to the core audience) but modernized it through a variable font and a contemporary modular system for housing tertiary information.
After completing this work, the priorities of the company at the time shifted away from updating the look and feel of Barrett-Jackson. As a result, this work remains unimplemented.