After more than 80 years in business, Turtle Wax faced a familiar challenge: staying relevant with a new generation of consumers.

"We'd lost a little bit of touch with the younger consumer," said Steve Millard, global marketing and ecommerce director at Turtle Wax. For many younger consumers, the brand was associated with products their parents or grandparents used.

To change that perception, Turtle Wax looked beyond traditional car care marketing and into an unlikely cultural arena: modern dating.

Turning dating data into brand relevance

Yesterday, the brand launched “Car Icks,” a campaign exploring the connection between car cleanliness and romantic compatibility, backed by proprietary survey data that revealed how much consumers associate vehicle care with personal habits and character.

According to the research:

• 73% of single consumers say the way someone takes care of their car reflects how they take care of themselves.
• 67% believe a messy car signals a messy personal life.
• Nearly one-quarter of singles have ended a date because of the condition of their date's car.

That last finding was particularly surprising to Millard.

"That feels like an inordinately high number for me," he said. "But then it was further validated by the fact that more than 50% of people judge people based on the state of their car. If you're judging someone based on how their car is, then maybe people are willing to end the date because of it."

By tying car care to a topic already dominating social conversations, Turtle Wax found a way to make an everyday maintenance habit feel culturally relevant.

Finding the right cultural messenger

To bring the campaign to life, Turtle Wax partnered with Kaylor Martin, a contestant from "Love Island USA."

For Millard, the partnership worked because it balanced cultural relevance with category credibility.

"She's obviously a 'Love Island' contestant, so straight away it ticks a box in terms of modern dating culture," he said. "The second thing is we know that she's got an authentic connection to cars. Her family's got a dealership background, and she was raised with the belief that how you care for your car is a reflection of how you care for yourself."

The collaboration highlights an increasingly important principle for marketers: Cultural participation works best when creators have a genuine connection to both the conversation and the product.

Connecting a functional product to an emotional need

The campaign also reflects a broader effort by Turtle Wax to position car care as something more meaningful than routine maintenance.

"The car has become part of your dating profile and part of your life in terms of how you're trying to move things forward," Millard said. "Car cleanliness has become one of those signals."

Rather than focusing solely on performance or product attributes, Turtle Wax is framing vehicle care as an extension of personal identity, a strategy that builds on its earlier "You Are Your Car" campaign, which portrayed vehicles as reflections of their owners.

"Your car is actually a reflection of who you are," Millard said. "If your car looks good, it makes you feel good."

That thinking has reshaped how the brand views its category. Rather than competing solely with automotive chemicals and maintenance products, Millard sees exterior car care as being "more closely linked with health and beauty than it is with performance chemicals."

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