Recently we received a letter in the post from Peter Redfern of Cornwall, who prompted us to give him a fair price for his snazzy toy motor.

The campaign was a huge success; we received our goal of 100 Tikes from generous donators around the country (namely our branches in Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and London), and donated a total of £1,000 to charity.

At webuyanycar.com , we love a challenge, so we set out not to acquire just one Tike, but a hefty collection of them instead! We tasked our lovely Twitter and Facebook followers to drop us their unused Tikes, and for each one we received we’d donate £10 to road safety charity Brake.

Back in September 2013, BuzzFeed writer Adam Jennings circulated a spoof letter on Twitter in which he claimed we declined to buy his lovely Tike.

The last twelve months has seen webuyanycar.com launch with Brake’s support a number of road safety initiatives designed to protect our youngest road users. They include: ‘See Me Stay Safe’, a high vis vest giveaway for children aged 4-7; and the GO 20 Competition for primary schools, challenging students to design a banner encouraging drivers to slow down to save lives.

As the UK’s favourite car buying service, webuyanycar.com takes its responsibility to road safety very seriously. Committed to protecting the lives of the UK’s most vulnerable road users, it is a proud sponsor of Brake, the road safety charity.

News

Here, you will find a selection of our favourite news articles, that have covered the creation of this site by www.webuyanycar.com.

To read the articles, just click on any of the images provided below and see what people have to say about our charitable response.

Gary Ennis, the author of this particular piece, gives you the full low-down on why the initial hoax became so popular on Twitter, as well as commending the efforts of our social media team in responding. He comments that ‘people started retweeting, many of them quick to berate WBAC for apparent lack of humour, with may of them also taking the opportunity to “have a go” about other issues’.

As a result, Adam Jenning’s letter received over thirty-thousand retweets, with this article highlighting the truly heroic efforts of social media team in turning criticism into praise. So, well done guys, your endeavours have not gone unnoticed!

TheDrum, who were named as the ‘Best Business magazine of 2013′ at the Prestigious Publishing Awards, focus upon the features of our humble site in the above article.

Author Jennifer Faull gives special mention to the excellent work of Democracy PR in envisioning our response, they highlight the charitable giving and our commitment to buying ‘ANY’ car.

Marketing Magazine was founded in 1931 and publishes only the biggest news from the marketing industry. When we saw them give mention to little old us, we were absolutely delighted!

Kudos is given to Democracy PR and a mention of our plan to “roll out a further service covering other toy cars in the future” – so watch this space! The article was written by Jonathan Tilley and if you wish to read it, just click on the image provided to be directed to the source.

In this article for Corporate Comms Magazine, Emily Smart compares the creation of webuyanytoycar.com to Sainsbury’s decision to rename Tiger Bread to Giraffe Bread, which followed a three-year-olds claim that “it looked more like a giraffe”.

Emily highlights many of the top Tweets involved in the hoax – from ourselves, Jamie and others – and placed into a chronological stream; that flows to the very end of the page itself. Some highlights include ‘Liv.I.am’s’ tweet, that asked @webuyanycar ”how much” would they pay for an array of hand-sized model racing cars, as well as Rebecca Crutchley’s most generous assertion that “Whoever is looking after @webuyanycar’s Twitter deserves a medal” (and we’re sure that they’d agree)!

Rexamples claims to be host of “the best stunts and campaigns in one place”. So we were once again extremely happy to have got such a positive citation - just like we are with all the articles that have been so kind to recognise us.

Ciaran McCormick in this article for PRexamples, claims that webuyanycar: “firmly reminded people that the letter was fake and quashed a rumour that they were calling the police to investigate the letter” and further illustrates the support from Twitter users, such as Victoria Leyton. Victoria claimed that she ‘really loved’ the “@webuyanycar response to the hoax letter”, adding that it “made her smile lots” - which is all we have ever hoped to do with this site.