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CARSTAR Brings Titanic to Life in Its Boldest Campaign Yet
CARSTAR's 2024 television commercial 'Titanic' is a comedic spot set aboard the RMS Titanic in which the ship's first officer casually recommends CARSTAR's collision repair services to the captain, anchoring a broad integrated campaign titled 'If There's a Collision, There's CARSTAR' across the United States and Canada, according to Mythic Us.
CARSTAR marks its return to national advertising with 'Titanic', its first major campaign since before the COVID-19 pandemic began. The brand, positioned as North America's largest network of collision repair experts, partnered with Charlotte, North Carolina-based agency Mythic to develop a platform bold enough to close a significant gap between strong customer satisfaction and relatively low public awareness, according to Little Black Book. Launched in August 2024, the campaign reaches audiences across both the United States and Canada simultaneously, with the US market receiving the 'Titanic' spot and the Canadian market receiving a companion execution titled 'Oh Deer'.
The integrated campaign extends well beyond television. Media channels include cable network and online streaming television in 30-second and 15-second formats, digital and social media, radio and streaming audio, print, and out-of-home advertising. The campaign platform's core message — 'If there's a collision, there's CARSTAR, no matter when, no matter where' — is designed to plant the brand at the forefront of consumers' minds before a collision ever occurs, ensuring CARSTAR becomes the default choice across North America when auto body repair is needed. The 'Titanic' spot serves as the campaign's most visible creative statement, using one of history's most recognisable maritime disasters as a playful vehicle to demonstrate the brand's decades-long collision repair expertise, according to Davidolsencreative.
CARSTAR faced a specific and measurable brand challenge entering 2024. Despite holding exceptional customer satisfaction ratings within its network of locally owned and operated auto body facilities, the brand lacked the broad public recognition its market position warranted, according to Mythic's own account of the campaign's strategic brief. The goal was not to fix a quality perception problem but to expand the audience who knew CARSTAR existed at all.
The collision repair category in North America sits within a substantial global industry. The global automotive collision repair market was estimated at approximately US$197.5 billion in 2024, according to Credence Research, with a separate estimate from Mordor Intelligence placing the figure at approximately US$210.9 billion for the same period. Growth projections across multiple research sources cited by Grand View Research and Research and Markets point to continued expansion through the end of the decade, driven in part by rising vehicle complexity and increasing repair costs. In the United States and Canada specifically, independent and franchise collision repair networks compete intensely for consumer mindshare, with major players such as Caliber Collision and Gerber Collision occupying significant portions of the North American market alongside CARSTAR.
CARSTAR's strategic response was to reframe the category conversation entirely. Rather than compete on functional attributes alone — turnaround time, OEM certification, insurance partnerships — Mythic built a platform around an emotional and mnemonic premise: every collision in history, no matter how grand or absurd, is an occasion that calls for CARSTAR. This approach allowed the brand to ladder up from individual repair jobs to a universal, culturally resonant claim while still grounding every execution in the brand's over-30-year legacy of collision repair excellence, as noted by Melissa Kwiatkowski, VP Marketing at CARSTAR.
The 'Titanic' commercial is directed by We The Grimshaws through Ruckus Films. The spot reconstructs the final uneventful evening aboard the RMS Titanic with period-accurate set design and costuming, placing the ship's first officer in conversation with the captain. In that quiet moment before the iceberg, the first officer raises CARSTAR's exceptional collision repair services entirely unprompted — for no reason at all, of course. The comedic engine is pure bathos: the grandest maritime disaster in recorded history becomes a straight-faced product endorsement vehicle.
David Olsen, EVP and Executive Creative Director at Mythic, led the creative development for the campaign, according to Mythic and as reported by LBBonline. The creative concept centred on recreating historic collisions in a playful, tongue-in-cheek register — a device that lets the brand own the word 'collision' across every conceivable cultural context while maintaining a light, approachable tone suited to a consumer audience that rarely thinks about auto body repair until it is urgently needed.
The production commitment evident in 'Titanic' is deliberate. Mythic and CARSTAR chose to invest in cinematic recreation rather than the low-budget comedic shorthand common to the automotive services category. The period setting, the measured performances, and the deadpan reveal of the product message together create a spot that earns attention rather than demanding it. The Canadian companion execution, 'Oh Deer', applies the same platform logic to a different collision archetype, demonstrating that the 'If There's a Collision, There's CARSTAR' creative system is built for extension rather than exhaustion after a single execution. Both spots air in 30-second and 15-second formats across cable, streaming, and digital channels in their respective markets.
No independently verified third-party performance data for the 'Titanic' campaign, such as brand lift studies, recall metrics, or sales attribution figures, is publicly available at the time of writing. CARSTAR and Mythic have not released quantified audience reach or engagement figures through public channels.
Clapboard rates the 'Titanic' campaign at 66 out of 100. That score reflects a campaign that succeeds at the level of concept and cultural hook — the Titanic as collision metaphor is immediately legible and genuinely memorable — while leaving structural room for deeper brand integration and measurable response mechanisms. The platform's architecture is its clearest strength: 'If There's a Collision, There's CARSTAR' is an extensible creative system with obvious longevity, and the companion execution 'Oh Deer' for the Canadian market confirms that Mythic designed this as a campaign system rather than a single hero spot.
The campaign's most significant strategic contribution may be temporal. CARSTAR's previous documented national campaign, the 2018 'It's Your Car' North American rebranding effort, ran across television, radio, digital, billboards, print, and social media in both the United States and Canada, according to Clapboard's archive. The six-year gap between that campaign and 'Titanic' means the 2024 work carries the additional burden of reintroducing the brand to a market that has shifted considerably — in streaming consumption habits, in insurance dynamics, and in the competitive landscape of North American collision repair. Against that backdrop, the boldness of the creative choice and the breadth of the media plan represent a substantive recommitment to brand building in the United States and Canada.
The CARSTAR 'Titanic' campaign is a 2024 comedic television spot set aboard the RMS Titanic. A first officer casually recommends CARSTAR's collision repair services to the ship's captain in an otherwise uneventful scene. It anchors the broader integrated platform 'If There's a Collision, There's CARSTAR', created by agency Mythic and running across the United States.
Mythic, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based advertising agency, created the 'Titanic' campaign for CARSTAR. David Olsen, EVP and Executive Creative Director at Mythic, led creative development. The spot was directed by We The Grimshaws through Ruckus Films and launched in August 2024 across the United States and Canada.
The 'Titanic' spot launched in August 2024 and airs throughout the United States. The campaign also includes a Canadian companion execution titled 'Oh Deer'. Both markets receive television, streaming, digital, social, radio, and out-of-home advertising as part of the integrated 'If There's a Collision, There's CARSTAR' platform.
CARSTAR's campaign platform is 'If There's a Collision, There's CARSTAR'. The key message is that CARSTAR provides collision repair expertise no matter when or where a collision occurs. The platform was designed to build broad brand awareness across North America, addressing a gap between strong customer satisfaction and relatively low public recognition.
'Titanic' is CARSTAR's first national campaign since before the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite strong customer satisfaction within its network, the brand faced low awareness among wider audiences. CARSTAR partnered with Mythic to refresh its advertising and reach new consumers, building on its over-30-year legacy of collision repair excellence across the United States and Canada.
Clapboard rates the CARSTAR 'Titanic' campaign 66 out of 100. The score reflects a strong, extensible creative concept with clear cultural resonance, while noting room for deeper brand integration. The platform's architecture and its companion Canadian execution 'Oh Deer' demonstrate the campaign was designed as a long-term creative system.
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