Jan 31, 2008 6:03 AM, PROMO Xtra, By Richard Tedesco

Cars.com is using two Super Bowl spots to kick off a $200 million marketing campaign, with characters from those spots playing roles in interactive ads online after the Big Game.

The Car Shopping Confidence campaign includes an ad in which a consumer brings a warrior with him—just in case he needs a back-up plan for his car-shopping gambit. “Confidence Comes Standard” is the tagline for the spots that also show confident shoppers who did their homework on the Cars.com site.

Cars.com joins a Super Bowl ad field featuring dot-com companies as regular contingents in the now nearly $3 million per 30-second crowd of Big Game ad buyers.

“We thought there’s no better way to kick off our campaign than with the Super Bowl,” said Cars.com spokesman Steve Nolan.

A post-game campaign will launch online featuring the Super Bowl ads and one additional video spot that will enable prospective car shoppers to interact with the ad characters. The characters in the amusing video vignettes can be incorporated in customizable e-mail messages visitors can send to friends to help them negotiate their way through various life situations. Five more TV spots will air during the campaign.

The campaign and the ads were developed by DDB Chicago. Interactive banner ads featuring characters from the ads also support the effort.

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