"We recently revised our marketing plan, and part of that exercise was to evaluate and understand the queries we commonly receive from our customers on social media," says Rikus Blomerus, general manager of marketing at WeBuyCars.

"This led us to the conclusion that we need to communicate information about WeBuyCars to our customers in a way that is fun, entertaining and broadly accessible," adds Blomerus.

WeBuyCars says that it had two main objectives.

"South Africans enjoy laughing together and tend to share a unique sense of humour, so we wanted to reach our customers through this shared sense of humour, and to create entertaining content that is relevant to WeBuyCars," says the company.

"Bezuidenhout is extremely entertaining and currently, very relevant. When Bezuidenhout shared a video online, stating that his show will be bigger than a WeBuyCars branch, we found it funny and wanted to meet with him to discuss a possible collaboration," says Blomerus.

"There were instantly recognisable links between Schalk and WeBuyCars. Like our customer base, Bezuidenhout has an extremely diverse audience. South Africans love and adore him; he is one of South Africa's most popular and enjoyed comedians and those factors made the decision to go ahead with Schalk so easy," Blomerus adds.

"Originally, we planned on producing the Flip It series, but Bezuidenhout then came up with the petrol video concept and we loved it," Blomerus says. 

In less than two months, the video received more than two million views on YouTube alone. In the same timeframe, Facebook statistics show that the video reached 227 974 people and garnered 2 488 reactions, shares and comments.

Adding to this, Bezuidenhout shared the video on his pages, receiving 185 000 views and 11 384 reactions, shares and comments on Facebook. There were 80 000 combined views on WeBuyCars and Bezuidenhout's Instagram pages. Anecdotally, people are talking about the videos, and they have gone viral on WhatsApp.

"These videos bring some unexpected levity and a laugh to the business of buying or selling a car," says Blomerus.

"Anyone can share Bezuidenhout's madcap humour by subscribing to WeBuyCars' YouTube channel. There are more videos featuring him in the pipeline, and when you think it can't get any funnier, Bezuidenhout proves you wrong," Blomerus concludes.


For more information, visit www.webuycars.co.za. You can also follow WeBuyCars on Facebook, Twitter or on Instagram.