Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.

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Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.

A CAR TO BE PROUD OF CAMPAIGN
EVERYDAY CAMPAIGN
FUEL FOR THOUGHT CAMPAIGN
GET THE FEELING CAMPAIGN
KIDS RULE CAMPAIGN
THE ROAD IS CALLING CAMPAIGN

19001 S. Western Avenue
Torrance, California 90509
USA
Telephone: (310) 468-4000
Fax: (310) 381-7800
Web site: www.toyota.com

A CAR TO BE PROUD OF CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW

Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., was the subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corp. charged with selling, marketing, and distributing the Toyota, Lexus, and Scion brands in the United States. The Toyota Corolla was the first line of cars Toyota ever introduced in the United States, and it had long been one of the most successful lines in the world. In 2002 Toyota launched the ninth generation of the Corolla with a campaign titled "A Car to Be Proud Of." This campaign came on the heels of a disappointing year for Corolla sales; in 2002 sales declined by nearly 50,000 units from the previous year.

Saatchi & Saatchi, an ad agency with long-standing ties to Toyota, developed and administered the $30 million-plus campaign. Conill Advertising and the Burrell Communications Group were also enlisted to conduct campaigns targeting the Latino and African-American communities, respectively. The campaign was designed to appeal to younger consumers, particularly those aged 25 to 35. This image-conscious group often saw the Corolla as a staid, overly practical automobile. To change that perception Saatchi & Saatchi released daring commercials such as "Key Party." In this spot a roomful of men at a swingers' key party looked on anxiously as a heavyset woman took her turn choosing a set of keys that would determine with whom she would go home. Despite the men's reluctance to be matched up with her, when she picked the keys to a Corolla, everyone rose to claim them. The spot closed with the tagline "A Car to Be Proud Of."

The campaign was a hit with critics, and it won a Silver Lion (Cars category) at the 2002 Cannes International Advertising Festival and a 2004 Silver Clio Award. It also led to a sales boost: 262,064 Toyota Corolla units were sold in 2003, versus only 195,767 units the previous year.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

By the end of the twentieth century Japanese car company Toyota was producing more than 5.5 million units per year, making it one of the largest auto manufacturers in the world. The Corolla was originally introduced to the Japanese market in 1966. Two years later it became the first Toyota car launched in the United States. The original Corolla was small, affordable, and dependable. Because Americans in the 1960s often had a negative view of the performance of Japanese-made vehicles, establishing a reputation for quality was important for Toyota.

Once Toyota had established the Corolla as a quality automobile, it worked on making it more attractive to consumers. In the 1970s it made the car larger and added horsepower to the engine. These improvements appealed to car buyers, and the Corolla became one of the most successful cars in the world. By the late 1970s and early 1980s Toyota had added sport coupé, hatchback, and liftback versions to the Corolla line. The Corolla underwent a major redesign in 1988, with the liftback being phased out in favor of a new front-wheel-drive coupé. In an effort to keep the car fresh Toyota redesigned the Corolla several more times over the years. The Corolla's reputation only grew, and by 1997 it was the best-selling car in the world.

By 2003 it was time for Toyota to reimagine the Corolla once more. Sales in 2002 had been disappointing. In contrast to a successful 2001, during which Toyota moved 242,750 units of the Corolla line, sales in 2002 sagged to 195,767 units. Because the Corolla was among the most visible automobiles in its fleet, Toyota viewed this nearly 50,000—unit decline as cause for concern.

In terms of units sold, Corolla was still one of the most popular cars in the world, a result in large part of a reputation for being a long-lasting, high-performing machine. It was, however, viewed by younger buyers as an unglamorous, uncool car. Toyota's traditional marketing approach played into this image. The company had focused on its vehicles' performance instead of on the design. One of Toyota's best-known campaigns, "Oh, What a Feeling," was sometimes parodied because each spot closed with a scene in which the Toyota driver jumped up, overcome with excitement after driving his Toyota. The spots were earnest and unflashy, just like the Corolla itself.

TARGET MARKET

Toyota set a goal of selling 230,000 units for model year 2003. It wanted to expand Corolla's market share further by attracting a new population of drivers. The car had always performed well with middle-class drivers, especially families, but among the automaker's biggest challenges was a perception that the steady, reliable Corolla was also a dull car. To address this problem Toyota decided on a two-pronged approach. First, Toyota redesigned the Corolla with an eye toward making the car more aesthetically pleasing to consumers. It had been several years since the Corolla had been significantly redesigned, and some consumers were growing bored with the older look. Next, the company introduced the Toyota Matrix, a new line built on the Corolla platform. The Matrix featured a sleeker design to appeal to single car buyers in their 20s.

This approach kept Toyota from spreading the Corolla too thin. Rather than expecting the Corolla to be all things to all people, Toyota used the Matrix to take pressure off the older vehicle line. While the Corolla would have a sleeker look, the Matrix could push that even further because there was no risk of alienating an existing audience. Toyota could go forward with its efforts to reach young compact-car buyers without worrying that the existing Toyota compact-car audience was being overlooked. Between the two vehicles, Toyota hoped to have the entire compact segment covered.

While the Matrix was aimed at image-conscious singles who ordinarily might not buy a subcompact car, the Corolla was still geared toward the traditional sub-compact market. But the company also wanted to attract more buyers in the 25- to 35-year-old range. Often Corolla buyers were in their 40s, and the company felt that younger car buyers were an untapped market. Therefore, the "Car to Be Proud Of" campaign's concentration was on consumers aged 20 to 29.

OOBEYA

The new Corolla was designed according to the Japanese principle of oobeya, which roughly translated to English as "big, open office." Rather than adhering to a rigid, hierarchical system to conceive and build the new Corolla, the entire design team, from engineers to marketers, worked together to make the Corolla succeed. That meant that sales, engineering, marketing, and other departments all had input on how the new Corolla looked and what kind of special features it had. From sales and marketing professionals, designers learned what consumers liked about previous editions of the Corolla and what features drivers did and did not respond to. That feedback led to the introduction of a CD-player option for the Corolla.

The most important aspect of oobeya, however, was the way it improved communication. Logistical problems were caught early, saving money for the company. For example, the only North American plant that made Corollas with sunroofs was in Canada, even though far more consumers in the United States purchased that option. Engineers pointed out that making the sunroofed Corollas in California would save transportation costs. This helped Toyota keep the Corolla's price below $20,000.

COMPETITION

Toyota's primary rivals were two other Asia-based automobile manufacturers: Honda Motor Company and Nissan Motor Corp. Both were expanding their North American manufacturing in the early 2000s, which many observers felt would help the companies to build customer loyalty in the American market. The Honda Civic and Nissan Sentra were particularly strong competitors against the Corolla, since both were imported cars in the compact segment. Other major imports that competed with the Corolla were the Mitsubishi Lancer and the Mazda Protegé. Because of its sleek exterior the Protegé in particular attracted a younger, hipper consumer than the Corolla. The Ford Focus also provided the Toyota Corolla with some competition.

Toyota had been making serious inroads against these competitors in the late 1990s and early 2000s. While the automaker had an 8.8 percent share of the U.S. market in 1998, that had risen to more than 9 percent by 2000. By October 2003 Toyota controlled 11.2 percent of the U.S. market.

MARKETING STRATEGY

Toyota earmarked upwards of $30 million for the campaign. It designated Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles to implement it. Saatchi & Saatchi was a major worldwide advertising agency whose parent company, the Publicis Groupe, was Europe's largest communications company. The agency had handled a number of campaigns for Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., including the U.S. launch of the entire Lexus brand. Saatchi & Saatchi's approach was to turn brands into "lovemarks," brands that inspired devotion in consumers that endured "beyond reason." Because Corolla was a well-known brand with a lot of visibility, it was a good example of a potential "lovemark."

One component of the campaign was to make the entire Toyota brand a highly visible sponsor at both the Florida and California branches of Universal Studios. Another component was the company's outreach program to Latinos and African-Americans. Conill Advertising in Torrance, California, was retained to create new print ads and television commercials specifically for the Latino community and to adapt the current Corolla campaign for that market. The Chicago-based Burrell Communications Group was retained to handle outreach to African-Americans.

The campaign featured a variety of posters and print advertisements, but the key to the campaign was a series of television spots. The theme of the campaign was that the Toyota Corolla was "A Car to Be Proud Of." This tagline evoked the car's reputation for quality. In order to grab the attention of younger consumers, however, the television spots themselves were irreverent, even controversial.

The spots ran on youth-oriented programs on the WB, Fox, and NBC networks. In keeping with Toyota's efforts to reach out to young consumers, the commercials used humor to give the car a cooler, edgier image. The two central spots were "Key Party" and "Party Dress." "Key Party" featured a group of couples sitting around at a swingers-style key party, picking car keys as a way to pair up for the evening. As a heavyset woman walked forward to choose a set of keys, all the men in the room grew tense. When she pulled out the keys to a Corolla, all that changed. One by one, every man in the room claimed the keys were his, implying that every man wanted to claim he owned a Corolla. The spot closed with the tagline "A Car to Be Proud Of." The spot's sexual innuendo—key parties were usually associated with the swingers scene of the 1970s—drew some criticism, however.

"Party Dress" was a 40-second spot that also used humor to show the lengths to which people would go in order to claim a Corolla. The commercial began with a man and his daughter walking on a sidewalk. The daughter was ready for a party in a new dress until a Corolla drove by and splashed water on the two pedestrians, ruining the dress. The father searched for the perpetrator and came across an innocent bystander. When the father asked the bystander if he knew who was driving the car, however, the bystander took responsibility himself. Off-camera the father was then heard to strike the man. The joke was that the bystander was willing to be assaulted just to claim that he owned a Corolla. "A Car to Be Proud Of" appeared at the end of the commercial.

OUTCOME

Critics applauded the Toyota campaign. While some found the sexual and violent undertones of the "Key Party" and "Party Dress" spots to be unpleasant, the typical response was one of unqualified enthusiasm. Saatchi & Saatchi's work won the Silver Lion in the Cars category at the International Advertising Festival in Cannes, France, in 2002. This ceremony, dubbed "the Olympics of Advertising," was considered to be the most prestigious award in the industry. The campaign also garnered a Silver Clio Award in 2004 for "Party Dress."

More importantly, sales of the Corolla rebounded strongly. With 262,064 units sold in 2003, the Corolla not only outperformed its disappointing 2002 sales of 195,767 units, but it also surpassed the stronger 2001 sales period, during which 242,750 units were sold. The Corolla had returned as a major force in the industry and helped Toyota post strong company-wide sales in 2003.

EVERYDAY CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW

During the late 1990s Japan's largest carmaker, Toyota Motor Corporation, was edging its way into the American car industry's top triumvirate. The "Big Three" U.S. automakers were General Motors Corporation, DaimlerChrysler Corporation, and Ford Motor Company; but Toyota's reputation as a modest, reliable car yielded record-breaking sales nearly every year throughout the 1990s. Despite their reputation as Japanese imports, most Toyota cars sold in America were also made in America. Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., (TMS) was the American sales, distribution, and marketing subsidiary of Toyota and employed more than 30,000 Americans. Hoping to continue its success with a first-time branding campaign for Toyota, the automaker released a campaign called "Everyday."

Instead of advertising its cars' details, like many American automakers, TMS wanted to advertise the Toyota brand and its appeal to everyday people. An overarching slogan, "Everyday," was introduced across print media and television. The campaign was developed by the ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi Pacific of Torrance, California, and was used to market nearly every model manufactured by the company. Created from TMS's $350 million ad budget, these advertisements, which portrayed real people in real-life situations, first aired on September 12, 1997. The late-1960s hit "Everyday People" by Sly and the Family Stone was the emblem song for the campaign. One of the less celebrated spots featured a couple debating whether or not to roll up the windows on their Toyota Corolla. After smelling their baby in the backseat, they decided to keep the windows lowered. In the middle of the campaign the tagline changed to "Every Day" until the effort concluded in late 2000.

The spots were ridiculed by critics for being tedious or sanctimonious. Polls conducted by USA Today found that other ad agencies rated "Everyday" the fifth-worst campaign of 1998. Only 23 percent of the consumers surveyed liked the ads a lot. Saatchi & Saatchi explained that it initially used the word "everyday," meaning commonplace, instead of "every day," which suggested reliability, because visually one word looked better in print ads. Ad critics lambasted the decision. Nonetheless, in terms of sales growth TMS outperformed nearly every large automaker in America.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

In September 1997 Toyota released its new "Everyday" ad campaign with 30- and 60-second commercials on network television and print ads in USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. The advertisements, developed by Saatchi & Saatchi, were set in commonplace environments and showed people in routine situations. Previous Toyota slogans, such as "You asked for it, you got it," "Who could ask for anything more?" and "I love what you do for me" (initiated in 1990), focused on the object being sold. The "Everyday" ads, in contrast, focused on people more than products. Initial ads centered on a series of lifestyle affirmations—regular people were shown responding to the challenge "All you have is today. How will you make it count?" This reflected a strategic switch from the advertising of specific product details to storytelling—creating a world for the product to exist in.

TARGET MARKET

The target market for the "Everyday" campaign consisted of baby-boomer consumers—those who came of age in the 1960s. "Everyday People," the song by Sly and the Family Stone that was used in the campaign's television commercials, hit the charts in 1969. "Music marks our lives, and 'Everyday People' is just one of those songs that people associate with a meaningful time in their lives," said Joe McDonagh, executive creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi. The song was used as an anthem evoking a lifestyle and an attitude more than as an overt theme song to be associated with a particular product. The emotional weight of the song came through its associations with baby-boomer nostalgia (other songs considered were "Day Tripper," "Yesterday," and "Daydream Believer"). But it was also hoped that it would be given a contemporary hearing as well, with its message of diversity.

Both ends of the baby-boomer spectrum were targeted, but in particular the ads were directed at parents. Some ads targeted parents of young children, with posters for the campaign distributed to 1,250 child care centers and an additional 3 million brochures sent to these centers as well as to the parents of newborns at hospitals.

Other ads, specifically those for Toyota's sporty Camry Solara, were directed at older parents—active empty nesters with a median age of 40-45. Toyota researchers found that about 1.5 million empty-nest baby boomers entered the market each year. Thirty-second spots developed by Saatchi & Saatchi for this group carried the "Everyday" tagline but said, "There are times when life is full of responsibilities. There are vehicles for those times. This is not one of those vehicles."

Targeting baby boomers also meant targeting a population saturated with years of television advertising. The challenge for an ad agency marketing any product, whether hamburgers, tennis shoes, or cars, was to reach television viewers who had learned to tune out hard-sell, product-oriented commercials and connect with these viewers emotionally—hit them, so to speak, where they lived.

COMPETITION

As reported by Frank S. Washington in Automotive News, the 1990s brought parity to the U.S. automotive market. "Other Asian manufacturers as well as the Big 3 and European automakers are building products of comparable quality, and currency valuations have led to competitive pricing. The bottom line: quality alone is no longer the primary reason to buy any vehicle," he wrote. While Japan's "Big Three"—Toyota, Honda, and Nissan Motor Corporation—traditionally had gained market share in the United States through the quality of their cars, the challenge now was to achieve an identity in the American cultural landscape. Toyota's "Everyday" campaign, which presented the company as an interpreter and promoter of family values, stressed a company-wide identity for Toyota; other car manufacturers responded with umbrella campaigns of their own.

By June 1996 Nissan had a brand familiarity of 69 percent, according to marketing research conducted by the Allison-Fisher firm of Southfield, Michigan. This trailed Honda's 74 percent. Toyota led, with 81 percent. To give Nissan a sense of personality, a $200 million "Life Is a Journey—Enjoy the Ride" brand campaign was released. The ads were popular with consumers, hundreds of whom requested copies to download onto their personal computers, and the number of car shoppers who said they intended to buy a Nissan rose 21 percent. Honda, however, remained Toyota's toughest competitor. Toyota's Camry was the best-selling U.S. car in 1997, but Honda's Accord outsold Camry as of August 1998, selling 266,280 units compared to Camry's 176,577.

EVERYDAY OR EVERY DAY

The incorrect use of "everyday"—meaning common, ordinary—to connote reliability ("every day") was a conscious choice made by Saatchi & Saatchi. "Grammatically, it should be two words," Sally Reinman, an executive with the ad agency, conceded to the Wall Street Journal. But after six months of intense discussion, Saatchi & Saatchi decided to go with one word. It looked friendlier and zippier, Reinman said. "It's more than just a word. It's how the word looks. It's how you deconstruct the language." Reinman said she herself preferred the one-word slogan because it looked as if it came from real consumers, not a big car manufacturer. Art directors wanted it too, because two words looked awkward as a signature. By retaining the two-word variant in the body of its ads, Saatchi & Saatchi showed that it knew what it was doing. "I will always speak my mind. Every day," said a man wearing sunglasses in one commercial. Then the slogan appeared: "Toyota. Everyday."

Of the smaller competitors, Mitsubishi initially emphasized a theme similar to Toyota's "Everyday" with its own "Built for Living" campaign. As in the Toyota ads, individual Mitsubishi models were shown in everyday situations with unexpected, humorous outcomes. At the end of each commercial an assortment of car models was then displayed, with the purpose of extending the spot's impact to the full Mitsubishi line. These spots were credited with increasing Mitsubishi sales in 1997. But a subsequent "Wake Up and Drive" campaign by Mitsubishi had a slightly different emphasis that contrasted with this celebration of the quotidian. It highlighted the exceptional in the everyday, with spots showing a car racing through a tunnel accompanied by the words "No one will ever notice the baby seat." Mazda Motor Corporation took a similar tack with its "Get In. Be Moved." ad theme. Mazda was not trying to simplify lives, sell cars for everyday people, or make vehicles popular with dogs, Richard Beattie, president and chief executive of Mazda North American Operations, told the Associated Press. "We appeal to people who love to drive," he said, "drivers who take the long way home. We are not a brand for everybody."

The "Everyday" theme appeared to have more success. In 1998 Toyota sales in the United States were up 6.4 percent. Toyota Motor Corporation and Honda Motor Co., the biggest Japanese automakers, both gained in the United States that year, while the smaller Japanese competitors, Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Mazda, after promising starts (Mazda sales were up 6.8 percent early in the year) fell further behind.

MARKETING STRATEGY

By 1997 auto marketers spent more on advertising than any other industry, but they were one of the last categories to initiate brand campaigns. To get more mileage out of their advertising dollars, car companies in 1998 took their cue from other industries, especially the fashion industry, and made the move to establish brand campaigns. Toyota planned to increase its 1998 ad budget by at least 10 percent, from an estimated $350 million in 1997, but all products were to fall under the "Everyday" branding campaign.

"We feel it's our first brand campaign," Dave Illingworth, senior vice president and general manager of the Toyota Division of Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., told Advertising Age. He said he considered the previous "Oh, what a feeling" tagline to be "more of an advertising line." "'Everyday' reminds customers that Toyota is more than a car, or a truck," Illingworth elaborated to PR Newswire. "It is a company with integrity, dedicated to enabling consumers to meet their life needs, whatever they may be. It is a company that places the consumer first—everyday. Central to the [branding] strategy is the need to enable the consumer to find a way into the brand, in general, and the product, in particular. Connecting with the consumer is key."

This branding campaign coincided with breakthrough advertising that focused on the consumer and the buying experience more than on the actual product. Ads had to be both soft sell and sophisticated, connecting with consumers who likely viewed about 36,000 television commercials each year. A USA Today survey ranked automotive commercials last in likability. Auto marketers realized that they had to learn to talk with consumers, not at them. "Consumers today possess a highly sophisticated filtering system," said Illingworth. "Our message must talk with, not at the consumer. It must show how our products contribute positively to the consumer's life. And it must show that we are serious about winning customers for life—everyday."

The "Everyday" campaign fit into a new school of marketing that saw ads as road maps for consumers, showing them how real people, spanning a variety of ages, races, and environments, actually used a product and how it fit their lives. Gimmicky commercials—such as the kind featuring a 175-pound man suspended high above a city, attached to a beam with Super Glue—were out. "Today we've got to show the customer how our product is an elemental part of their lives," said Joe Cronin, president and chief executive of Saatchi & Saatchi Pacific, Toyota Motor Corporation's advertising agency for 22 years.

This so-called show-me approach to marketing did not mean, however, that ads had to be humorless or devoid of whimsy. A television spot for the Toyota Sienna minivan showed the minivan emerging from a garage accompanied by the voices and sounds of a baby being born ("Take a breath now. Push. Here it comes."). The tagline—"Your life will never be the same"—appeared, followed by the brand slogan, "Toyota. Everyday."

Babies, in fact, were a favorite topic in the ads. An older couple in one spot wrangled over the window controls—up or down? The question was settled by a suspicious odor emanating from the infant in the backseat. Another spot showed a mother expertly and easily flipping up the backseats to look for a lost pacifier. Some commercials were everyday to the point of being charmingly laconic, as detailed by Bob Garfield in Advertising Age: "the best shows two working stiffs waking from a lunch-break snooze. 'We gotta go,' says one, sprawled on the far-reclining passenger seat of his buddy's Corolla. 'You're ruining my nap,' says his buddy, still sacked out on the driver's side. 'You don't understand. I can't get back late.' 'I do understand. We work for the same people,' says his friend, as we watch them in fast motion performing a series of post-nap ablutions and speeding back to work just in time. 'Technically we're an entire minute early.' 'I'll note this on my time sheet,' says the passenger dryly. Then the inimitable Sly Stone begins crooning, ' I … I … I … am everyday pe-o-ple.' This spot, in Garfield's opinion, said that Toyota did not merely set the standard; it was the norm. 'Everyone looks [every day] for those they can count on whether it's in a person or a brand," said Saatchi & Saatchi's McDonagh. "We believe we've found, and will demonstrate, Toyota's rightful place in people's lives—nothing more and nothing less."

When TMS released its first full-size pickup truck, the 2000 Tundra, Saatchi & Saatchi did not believe that "Everyday" advertised the truck's uniqueness. Instead, the Tundra was promoted with the inquisitive tagline "Have we gone too far? Or have others not gone far enough?" In September 1999 the "Everyday" tagline was split into two words after the one-word slogan was relentlessly criticized for suggesting that Toyotas were mediocre. To herald Toyota's year-2000 vehicles, eight new spots were created with TMS's $150 million budget. One spot featured a city suffering a power blackout while an unaffected Corolla remained powered. The tagline, "Always there. Every day," appeared on the screen. Further spots were created for the new Sienna, Camry, and Tacoma. Another 1999 commercial featured computer-animated ants crossing a road to advertise the diligence of Corolla's new VVTi engine. The spot ended with the copy "Charging ahead. Every day."

The campaign also splintered in September 1999. Realizing that baby boomers were no longer the majority of America's consumers, Saatchi & Saatchi adjusted the campaign to target consumers under the age of 35. TMS executives feared that the Toyota brand might succumb to the fate of Oldsmobile and Buick—both antiquated brands in the late 1990s. Sly and the Family Stone's "Everyday People" jingle was replaced with contemporary hip-hop and heavy-metal music. Spots ending with the tagline "Everyday People" featured 20-somethings enjoying Toyota's new subcompact car the Echo, which started at $9,995. Print and television spots for "Every Day" ran through the end of 2000.

OUTCOME

In a December 21, 1998, USA Today article in which advertising experts reviewed the best and worst ads of 1998, Richard Kirshenbaum of the ad agency Kirshenbaum, Bond and Partners in New York called the "Everyday" campaign a bust, saying, "Even everyday people don't want to be everyday people." The campaign "irritates most everyday people I know," added Gary Goldsmith, vice chairman and executive creative director of Lowe and Partners/SMS.

But as the article made clear, a campaign's popular-ity—or unpopularity—did not necessarily guarantee its longevity or sales. While the effectiveness ratings in the USA Today survey for the Toyota campaign were even lower than those for popularity, Toyota sales in the United States rose 6.4 percent in the calendar year 1998, compared with a 2.9 percent industry-wide increase. Toyota's sales, awareness, and consideration among car buyers had increased since the campaign was initiated, said Toyota ad manager Michael Bevan. David Pelliccioni, Toyota Division vice president of marketing, concurred that the "Everyday" campaign had succeeded in increasing customer awareness of Toyota.

"Toyota's one of the few companies that can afford to get away with running creative ads that emphasize image more than features," said Jim Wangers, a consultant with Automotive Marketing Consultants. Nevertheless, as reported in Automotive News in January 1999, a Toyota source said that the company wanted to return to more product-specific advertising and eliminate storytelling, which it accomplished with its subsequent "Get the Feeling" campaign, released in 2001.

Despite poor response to the campaign—which included consumer polls discrediting the campaign's effectiveness, critics accusing the campaign of mediocrity, and competing agencies pronouncing "Everyday" one of the worst campaigns of 1998—sales for TMS soared. December 2000 vehicle sales rose 14.2 percent above the previous year. Reflecting on TMS's success, the Advertising Age ad critic Bob Garfield wrote in 2005 that Toyota's slogans, such as "Everyday," were "a statement of the generic obvious" but were still effective for selling cars. The slogan's humdrum tone only skirted Toyota's main quality, which Garfield believed was safety. "Not the crash-test kind [of safety]; that positioning belongs to Volvo," he wrote. "The safety that defines Toyota is the certain knowledge you can buy one and not make a mistake. It's safely within the styling standards of contemporary good taste. It's safely within the boundaries of reasonable power and performance." Garfield then criticized campaigns such as "Everyday" for only advertising Toyota's reliability. He suggested that Toyota's future campaigns advertise the quality he first defined as "safety" and later as owner "satisfaction"—the real reason Toyota excelled worldwide.

FUEL FOR THOUGHT CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW

Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., Inc., was responsible for the distribution, marketing, and sales of all Toyota vehicles in the United States. It was owned by the Toyota Motor Corporation, a Japanese company that by 2004 had become the second largest automaker in the world. Toyota's advertising efforts were organized on three levels: national, regional, and local. Regional campaigns were run with dealer associations, which were cooperative marketing groups made up of Toyota dealers operating within key metropolitan areas. The Chicago Region Toyota Dealer Association, centered on Chicago, Illinois, but including areas in three surrounding states, was one such co-op. At the time domestic competitors like the General Motors Corporation and the Ford Motor Company were using major incentives to promote their vehicles. These included cash rebates for buyers of new cars, which were designed to convince consumers that that they were getting a good value from those brands. One of the consequences for Toyota was that in 2003 its sales dipped 8.9 percent in the Chicago region.

Toyota and the Chicago Region Toyota Dealer Association charged Saatchi & Saatchi Chicago, the local office of Toyota's primary advertising agency, with developing a campaign to boost sales and increase dealer profitability. The campaign, which was titled "Fuel for Thought" and which had a budget of more than $20 million, included television and radio spots built around consumer testimonials on the quality, reliability, and safety of Toyota vehicles. It ran for nine months, from January through September 2004. The campaign strategy was to redefine "value" so that it meant not simply low price but also included the buyer's getting a reliable, safe vehicle for the money. Some spots depicted two or more drivers discussing the value of a Toyota, while others featured testimonials from drivers. Print ads featured copy that emphasized similar themes. This approach harkened back to earlier Toyota campaigns that also had focused on the company's reputation for well-built, dependable cars. Key vehicles in the campaign were the Camry, the best-selling car in the United States in 2003; the Corolla, a compact car; the RAV4, a compact sport-utility vehicle (SUV); the Highlander, a conventional SUV; and the Tundra pickup truck.

The "Fuel for Thought" campaign succeeded with both advertising critics and consumers. It won a 2005 Bronze EFFIE Award, and it also helped Toyota's market share climb from 7.5 percent to 8.7 percent in the Chicago region. One vehicle, the RAV4 compact SUV, saw its sales jump by more than 10 percent in the area. The Toyota Camry, which remained the top-selling car in the United States in 2004, saw unit sales improve by 4.8 percent. In fact, the Chicago Region Toyota Dealer Association posted higher sales increases than any other Toyota region in the United States and exceeded its sales expectations in seven of the nine months during which the campaign was running.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

In 1957 the Toyota Motor Corporation founded Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. to handle all distribution, marketing, and sales of Toyota automobiles in the United States. The American company was based in Torrance, California. By January 2004 Toyota had become the second largest automobile manufacturer in the world, behind only the American company General Motors. By that time Toyota was selling more than 5.5 million units worldwide every year.

In order to increase the effectiveness of its advertising, Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. organized its marketing efforts on three distinct levels. The first was made up of the company's national advertising campaigns. The second consisted of campaigns undertaken for the regional dealer associations that were centered around major metropolitan areas, as, for example, Portland, Oregon; Denver, Colorado; or Chicago, Illinois. Finally, individual dealers advertised locally. In the Chicago region 2003 was a difficult year for automotive sales. By September the sales of light passenger vehicles were down 8.9 percent from the previous year. To remedy this, Toyota dealers in the area decided to create a campaign tailored to the needs of their region.

Such regional advertising was always created in conjunction with local dealers. Thus, while each dealer ran its own local advertising, dealers from across a metropolitan area banded together to form associations. In this sense a dealer association was a marketing co-op made up of dealerships operating within a given area. The Chicago Region Toyota Dealer Association consisted of 112 separate dealerships across parts of four states.

Most of the advertising for Toyota in the early 2000s had been developed by Saatchi & Saatchi, an international agency owned by the French communications corporation the Publicis Groupe. In the United States most national Toyota campaigns were handled by Saatchi & Saatchi LA. The agency had become known particularly for its belief that brands should be turned into "lovemarks," that is, as something that inspired a deep loyalty from consumers. Advertising for the Chicago region was done by Saatchi & Saatchi Chicago, the agency's regional office.

Toyota's key passenger cars in 2004 included the Camry, the top-selling vehicle in the North American automobile market in both 2002 and 2003, selling more than 420,000 units each year. Also important was the Toyota Corolla, one of the best-selling compact cars in the United States, which sold more than 300,000 units in 2003. Because between these two vehicles accounted for such large sales, their continued success was a vital element in Toyota's goals for 2004.

COMPETITION

One factor that Toyota had to contend with was its competitors' use of incentives to lure new car buyers. In effect, such incentives put vehicles on sale, since they reduced the prices consumers paid to dealers. At the time the three large U.S.-based automakers, Ford, General Motors, and DaimlerChrysler, were offering generous incentives, which included cash rebates and favorable lease terms, on many of their vehicles. These automakers developed their advertising campaigns around the incentives, thus helping to bring their lower prices to the attention of consumers. Such developments put pressure on Toyota dealers, who were forced to compete without the benefit of similar incentives.

A number of other automakers produced vehicles that were comparable to key Toyota cars and trucks. These included the Honda Accord and Nissan Altima, which competed with Toyota's best-selling passenger car, the Camry. Competition for the Corolla included the Honda Civic, the Nissan Sentra, and such domestic cars as the Ford Focus. The RAV4 competed with other compact crossover SUVs like the Honda CR-V and the Ford Escape, while the Highlander SUV appealed to drivers who might also consider the Nissan Murano or the Honda Pilot. The Tundra pickup competed with imported trucks like the Nissan Titan.

TARGET MARKET

Toyota was interested in attracting a fairly broad range of consumers, hoping to boost sales for all of its key vehicles. The campaign, however, was geared mostly at adults between the ages of 25 and 49, especially those with a household income of more than $50,000. The advertising also targeted people who were most likely to explore buying a new car, by visiting a dealership for example, sometime within a month of coming in contact with the campaign. Beyond that, Toyota wanted a campaign that focused on a diverse group of buyers from different ethnic backgrounds and educational levels.

CAMRY: TOYOTA'S KEY VEHICLE

In 2004, at the time Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., Inc., and the Chicago Region Toyota Dealer Association were developing the "Fuel for Thought" campaign, the Camry was one of the company's key vehicles. Introduced in 1980, the Toyota Camry was the best-selling car in the U.S. market in seven of eight years between 1997 and 2004 (1997–2000 and 2002–04). In 2004 Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. sold 426,990 units of the vehicle. The car began life, however, as an offshoot of the Toyota Celica. It was originally called the Toyota Celica Camry, but by model year 1983 it had become an independent line.

The Toyota Camry was a midsize car, not known for a flashy exterior or souped-up engine. The vehicle's appeal rested on its reputation as a steady, reliable, safe car. The 2004 Camry came in three different versions: the LE, SE, and XLE. The LE was the most basic model, retailing for about $19,000 with a four-cylinder engine (the model cost $22,000 with a V-6.). The SE sold for almost $20,000 ($23,000 with a V-6) and featured a power moon roof along with bigger wheels and tires for a sportier drive. The XLE was the high-end model, with power seats, wood-grain trim, a CD player, and an alarm system, among other amenities. The sticker price ranged from $22,295 to $25,405, depending on the engine.

MARKETING STRATEGY

The "Fuel for Thought" campaign was developed by Saatchi & Saatchi Chicago, the regional office of Toyota's principal advertising agency. In developing the campaign, the agency worked with both Toyota Motors Sales and the Chicago Region Toyota Dealer Association.

Traditionally Toyota and their dealers had not spent as much on advertising in the Chicago area as had General Motors or Ford, automakers that were based in the region. The "Fuel for Thought" campaign was expensive, however, costing more than $20 million. Toyota attempted to use its resources efficiently by saturating a particular medium like television, for example, before introducing the campaign to another medium. The company also tried to reach the largest market possible with each spot or ad. As a result, 80 percent of the campaign consisted of advertising on television, 14 percent involved radio, and the rest was made up of print ads. The campaign ran for the first nine months of 2004

Toyota had high expectations for its Chicago-area dealerships. It was hoped that the "Fuel for Thought" campaign would boost sales in 2004, improve the company's share of the Chicago-area automotive market, boost profits for local dealers, and improve the penetration of the company's key vehicles into the Chicago market. To accomplish this, Saatchi & Saatchi decided that it was important to highlight the value of Toyota vehicles. This approach was not entirely new, for earlier national Toyota campaigns had focused on value, specifically on the quality and reliability of the company's cars and trucks. The "Fuel for Thought" campaign was centered around the company's key vehicles, the Camry and Corolla cars, the RAV4 and Highlander SUVs, and the Tundra pickup.

While Toyota offered some price incentives as well, these were not major elements in the campaign. In fact, Toyota's month-to-month incentives remained largely unchanged from 2003. Instead, the copy in all of the advertising used testimonials from drivers and straightforward product descriptions to focus on the value offered by a Toyota vehicle. Both television and radio spots used a slice-of-life format, depicting consumers talking to other consumers about the advantages of owning a Toyota. One definition of "value"—the idea that was at the center of the incentive programs of the three major U.S. automakers—was the value of a low price. The "Fuel for Thought" campaign, however, promoted the idea that value in a motor vehicle also included such things as quality, safety, innovation, and the cost of ownership. By these standards the ads promoted the idea that Toyota buyers were getting a good value for their purchase.

OUTCOME

The "Fuel for Thought" campaign was considered to be successful. Critics liked it, and the campaign won a 2005 Bronze EFFIE Award. Further, in 2004 the Chicago area had the largest sales growth for Toyota of any region in the United States. By the end of 2004 the Chicago Region Toyota Dealer Association had posted its best sales numbers since its creation more than 25 years earlier. Sales were up 17 percent over 2003, and they exceeded expectations in seven of the nine months the campaign was running. During three of those months the Chicago region posted better sales numbers than any other Toyota region in the country.

As a result, dealers in the Chicago region had higher profitability growth as a group than did dealers in any of the other Toyota regions. This achievement occurred as Toyota posted its best sales ever in 2004, selling a total of 2,060,049 units. It was the first time that Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. had sold more than 2 million units in North America. In January 2004 the Toyota Motor Corporation passed the Ford Motor Company to become the world's second largest automobile manufacturer in terms of sales, behind only Detroit-based General Motors.

Toyota's success occurred despite an industry-wide decline in sales of motor vehicles of 2.6 percent across the Chicago region. One result was that from 2003 to 2004 Toyota's market share in the region grew from 7.5 percent to 8.7 percent. In addition, its share of the light vehicle market rose from 9.5 percent to 10.9 percent, and its share of the light truck market rose from 5.8 percent to 7.0 percent. Each key vehicle in the campaign saw an increase in sales, with Camry increasing 4.8 percent in units sold, as it became the best-selling car in the Chicago area for 2004. The RAV4 saw its sales volume jump more than 13 percent, sales of the Corolla and Highlander both grew by more than 6 percent, and the Tundra saw sales rise by about 2.5 percent.

GET THE FEELING CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW

Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., the American subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation, was responsible for the marketing and sales of the company's products in the United States, including the Toyota, Lexus, and Scion brands. In 2001 Toyota redesigned the Celica in honor of the model's 30th anniversary. At one time the Celica had been a premier line for Toyota, and the Camry, which was spun off from it, became one of the most popular cars in the entire U.S. market. Nonetheless, in the face of competition, especially from Honda and Acura, the Celica had come to need revitalization. In 2000, while the Camry sold 422,961 units in the United States alone, the Celica lagged far behind, at only 52,112 units. Geared toward buyers between the ages of 18 and 35, the redesigned Celica had a look that was inspired in part by Indy 500 race cars. Among other sporty highlights, it featured an adjustable rear wing. Toyota wanted to capitalize on the dramatic redesign of the car with a new marketing campaign.

The "Get the Feeling" campaign, developed by Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles, located in Torrance, California, emphasized the car's appearance. This was a departure for Toyota, which had previously highlighted the performance and reliability of its automobiles. The centerpiece of the campaign, which began in 2001 and ran for a year, was a series of three 15-second television spots with the tagline "Looks Fast." All three spots began with a single camera shot of a red Celica parked on a suburban street. The shot was held in silence for several seconds, giving the viewer the chance to ogle the car. Each spot then ended with a humorous event, in which the parked car was mistakenly believed to be moving quickly, based on its sleek appearance alone. In the spot "Dog," for example, a dog was shown running onto the screen, trying to chase what looked to be a moving Celica. The dog then crashed into the back of the car, leading to the "Looks Fast" tagline.

The spots were successful with critics and won a number of awards, including the prestigious Cannes Gold Lion for "Dog." The campaign was not, however, able to revitalize the Celica. Sales of the car dropped substantially in both 2001 and 2002, and they continued to fall until the entire Celica line was finally canceled in 2004.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., was founded in 1957 to handle the marketing, distribution, and sales of Toyota vehicles in the United States. The company was based in Torrance, California. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the parent company, which was based in Japan, had become the world's third largest automaker in unit and net sales, producing more than 5.5 million vehicles every year. Toyota's advertising traditionally had been conservative, emphasizing the company's reputation for well-made, fuel-efficient vehicles. This was embodied in the advertising of the "We're Quality Oriented" campaign, used by the company in the 1970s. Toyota then introduced the "Oh, What a Feeling" campaign in the 1980s. This campaign and its slogan became widely associated with the brand, though some criticized it for being dull. In fact, dealers in Ontario, Canada, produced a parody of the ad, tweaking what came to be known as the "jump," the shot of a Toyota driver leaping in excitement that often closed the spots. Nonetheless, the conservative advertisements were consistent with Toyota's image as a maker of dependable cars that got good gas mileage.

The Toyota Celica was introduced to the U.S. market in 1971. Conceived of as Toyota's answer to the Ford Mustang, the Celica was intended to be an affordable sports car. It was successful with both critics and customers and was named Motor Trend's Import Car of the Year in both 1976 and 1978. The Celica was eventually eclipsed by another Toyota product, however, its offshoot, the Camry. Launched in 1980 as the Toyota Celica Camry, the new line was spun off on its own in the 1983 model year, and it became Toyota's best-known automobile. Soon most of the company's general advertising, particularly on television, was devoted to the top-selling Camry, which in sales was consistently one of the most popular midsize cars in the United States.

By the late 1990s there were rumors that Toyota was considering discontinuing the Celica. The car had been available in the U.S. market for more than two decades, which was a long time for a model to be in circulation. Further, for several years after 1993 the car had not undergone a significant redesign, which some people took as a sign of Toyota's flagging interest in the vehicle. In 1999 the Celica Coupe was eliminated, leaving only the GT Liftback and GT Convertible models. For the 2000 model year, however, Toyota redesigned the Celica, using Calty Design Research, Inc., to reconceive the styling of the car. The new Celica featured a cab-forward design and a distinctive spoiler, which gave it more of a racing look. In fact, the Celica's new appearance was partially inspired by Indy 500 cars. In honor of its 30th anniversary, the car was given an aggressive promotion at the 2001 New York International Auto Show.

COMPETITION

Toyota's closest competitor was Honda. Both were Japanese-based automakers that had penetrated deep into the North American automobile market by earning respect for their performance and reliability. In 2000 Honda sold 1,158,860 total units, up more than 7.5 percent over the previous year. The company went on to have an even better year in 2001, selling 1,207,629 units. Honda's Acura division made particularly big gains in 2001, with sales jumping 19.5 percent over 2000, to 170,469 units. Toyota, however, sold 1,741,254 units in 2000, buoyed by the ever-popular Camry, which that year sold 422,961. While the Celica sold a respectable 52,112 units, it was about to feel the pressure from new Honda models, such as the Acura RSX.

Celica's traditional competitor, however, was the Ford Mustang. Both were relatively inexpensive sports cars geared toward young buyers. But in popular culture the Celica had never achieved the status of the Mustang, at least partly because the latter, with its powerful, high-performance engine, was seen as more of a muscle car. Still, by 2001 the primary competition for the Celica was coming from Honda and its subsidiary Acura. In 2001 Acura replaced the Acura Integra Coupe, which had previously competed with the Celica, with the RSX. The Acura RSX was an immediate hit with critics and in 2002 and 2003 was named one of the 10 best cars of the year by Car and Driver magazine. The car shared a platform with the Honda Civic. Though the Civic traditionally was seen more as an economy car, it also eventually came to compete with the Celica. In 2001 the Civic Type-R was introduced, featuring a sportier look than previous models, another development that put pressure on Toyota.

TARGET MARKET

With the advent of the "Get the Feeling" campaign in 2001, Toyota began a new drive to sell the Celica. Once again the company turned to Saatchi & Saatchi, which handled almost all of its advertising. Toyota charged the Los Angeles office of Saatchi & Saatchi with the development of advertising that would attract a younger audience. While an understated advertising approach worked for the Camry, a four-door car popular with families, it had been less effective for the sporty two-door Celica. Toyota was also concerned that its customer base for the vehicle was becoming too old. In addition, the Celica was underperforming among male car buyers, and there was concern that it did not project the kind of macho image a sports car should have.

The "Get the Feeling" campaign was directed at both males and females between the ages of 18 and 35 who were in the market for a new car. Toyota wanted to build on its reputation for quality by highlighting the stylistic elements of the car. To accomplish this, Saatchi & Saatchi developed a series of three 15-second television spots—"Dog," "Old Man," and "Motorcycle Cop"—all with the tagline "Look Fast."

MARKETING STRATEGY

Saatchi & Saatchi stated that its purpose in the "Get the Feeling" campaign was to turn Toyota into a "love-mark," as opposed to simply a trademark. The thinking was that Toyota had achieved a high level of respect but that in a competitive automobile market respect alone was not enough. Many manufacturers of automobiles, such as Honda and Volkswagen, had achieved a high level of regard for the performance of their vehicles, and Toyota needed to distinguish itself from its competitors. The company needed an entertaining campaign that made an emotional connection with consumers. The concept of the lovemark, which was unique to Saatchi & Saatchi, was used by the agency to describe a brand that inspired "loyalty without reason." To build this kind of loyalty, Saatchi & Saatchi wanted to burnish Toyota's image by showing that its automobiles were not only reliable but aesthetically pleasing as well. The Celica was a good candidate for this approach, since it had a sporty look and competed with visually striking cars like the Acura Integra.

ADVERTISING AUTEUR

The award-winning television spots of the "Get the Feeling" campaign were produced by Independent Media, in Santa Monica, California, and directed by Chris Smith. The respected filmmaker, who had also directed ads on behalf of other major brands, such as TiVo and Lee jeans, had an ongoing relationship with Independent Media. He was especially known in the film industry, however, for his award-winning documentary American Movie. The film, which followed the efforts of the failed filmmaker Mark Borchardt, connected with audiences at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary. The work was praised for the way it mixed the comedy of its subject's eccentricities with a real affection for his determination. Smith's 1995 comic documentary American Job had also been screened at the festival.

Key agency players in the development of the ads were the creative directors Neal Ford and Doug van Andel, copywriter Sherry Hawkins, and art director Verner Soler. The spots were produced by Independent Media, of Santa Monica, California, and were directed by Chris Smith. Rather than developing the traditional 30-second spot, they were kept short, at 15 seconds each. The spots were designed so that two could run back-to-back. "Dog," the anchor spot, featured a single shot of a red Celica parked on a suburban street. After a few seconds a dog was shown running across the screen and crashing into the car. The implication, of course, was that the sporty new Celica looked fast even when it was standing still.

The other two spots used the same setup as "Dog": a single shot of a red Celica parked on the street. In the "Old Man" spot an elderly gentleman walking past the car stopped to yell that the driver should "slow down." The joke, of course, was that not only was the car parked but that no one was behind the wheel to hear him. In "Motorcycle Cop" a police officer pulled up behind the parked Celica to give it a speeding ticket. As with the "Old Man" spot, there was no driver to give a ticket to. All three spots closed with the "Looks Fast" tagline.

The point of the three spots was to demonstrate that the new Celica looked fast even when it was standing still. In all three the long single-camera shot put the focus on the car, inviting the viewer to admire its sleek design. Instead of an emphasis on Toyota's reputation for quality and performance, which is what might have been expected, the "Get the Feeling" campaign highlighted visual style in the most direct way possible. The humor of the campaign was meant to underscore the car's main selling point, its sporty new look. Since all three spots relied on a sustained single camera shot, the costs were kept at a minimum.

OUTCOME

Saatchi & Saatchi claimed that the "Get the Feeling" campaign helped lower the average age of Celica buyers by eight years. In 2001 and 2002 the median age of new Celica buyers was 29, well within Toyota's target range. Overall, however, sales of the Celica began to flag in the face of pressure from the Honda Civic and Acura Integra. While the Celica sold 52,112 cars in 2000, only 35,508 units were sold in 2001, and by 2002 the number of sales was down to just 22,676. On July 16, 2004, Toyota decided to discontinue the car altogether, citing increased competition.

Within the advertising industry, however, the campaign was highly successful, and the ads won numerous awards. Both the campaign as a whole and the "Dog" spot won prestigious Clio awards. The campaign also received a Silver Effie, among other accolades. The International Advertising Association gave individual Silver awards to both the "Dog" and "Old Man" spots. Ad Age named the "Dog" spot the Best Automotive Commercial of the Year. "Dog" also took home the 2002 Cannes Lions Grand Prix in Film, the Gold Lion, considered the most prestigious award in television advertising. The spot defeated 411 finalists, which had been whittled down from 5,059 entries. The "Old Man" spot won a Bronze Lion in the same competition.

KIDS RULE CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW

Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., was the distributor of Toyota Motor Corp.'s Toyota, Lexus, and Scion brands in the United States. In model year 2004 the company released a new version of its Sienna minivan. This launch was a top priority for the automaker, because the minivan segment featured strong competition from the new Honda Odyssey and Nissan Quest as well as from established domestic brands such as the Chrysler Town & Country. A segment-wide decline in sales throughout the 2000s made it imperative that the Sienna improve its meager 41 percent awareness rate among consumers, especially when the segment average stood at 48 percent.

To establish the Sienna in the minds of car buyers, Toyota turned to the Los Angeles office of ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi for a new kind of advertising campaign. In addition to using print ads, the Sienna would be marketed through a series of television commercials aimed at kids. Surveys indicated that more and more families were allowing their children to contribute to the decision about what automobile to purchase. To capitalize on this trend Sienna commercials featured child actors talking up kid-friendly features of the newly redesigned vehicle. For example, one spot featured a crash-test teddy bear, while another plugged the car's roomy interior by having a young boy explain that the car offered enough space for him to avoid his little sister. Each spot featured the tagline "Kids Rule." Toyota also sponsored Yahoo!'s family-friendly Yahooligans! Book Club and capitalized on other unorthodox advertising venues. The campaign's budget exceeded $20 million.

The 13-month launch was an unqualified success. In addition to winning a Silver EFFIE Award in 2005, the campaign led to a 99 percent jump in brand awareness among consumers, and this in turn fueled solid sales increases throughout the year. These gains came despite a slowdown for other vehicle sales in the segment, especially among the Sienna's key competitors.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Based in Torrance, California, Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., was founded in 1957 by the Japanese company Toyota Motor Corp. to handle U.S. sales, marketing, and distribution of Toyota automobiles. By the early 2000s Toyota was among the world's largest auto manufacturers, responsible for the production of more than 5.5 million units per year.

The Sienna first appeared in 1998 as a replacement for the unsuccessful Toyota Previa minivan line. While the vehicle was lauded for its safety and performance, it was not as successful as competitors such as the Honda Odyssey. By 2003, in anticipation of relaunching the line, Toyota had decided to redesign the Sienna. The car would be priced from $23,000 to $35,000 and would feature a sporty look and a more powerful 3.3-liter V-6 engine. The car was a success from the beginning with car critics, and Car and Driver named it one of 2004's Five Best Trucks in the "van" category.

TARGET MARKET

Toyota's primary focus for the Sienna was on consumers in the 30- to 39-year-old age range. The Sienna's target market was the same that most minivans shot for, namely professionals, retirees, couples, and families. With the Sienna launch Toyota made the innovative move of targeting not only the parents in those families but also the children. According to a 1999 survey conducted by marketing-information firm J.D. Power and Associates on behalf of the Nickelodeon television network, 62 percent of parents claimed that their children participated actively in the family's decision on what car to buy. Toyota planned to target those children directly with kids-centered advertising and the introduction of the "Kids Rule" tagline.

INTERNET OUTREACH

In April 2004 Toyota became the first automaker to host a Chinese-language website in the United States on behalf of a new automobile. The site was produced as part of the 2004 relaunch of the Sienna minivan. By the early 2000s Asian-Americans were the third-largest minority group in the United States, after Latinos and African-Americans. At the beginning of the decade Toyota began a companywide outreach program aimed specifically at these demographic groups. In some cases advertising agencies were enlisted to provide marketing campaigns specifically tailored for Latino and African-American consumers. Toyota decided to approach the Asian-American market, however, through the Internet.

Toyota chose to conduct a Web-based campaign after internal research revealed that, when looking to purchase an automobile, Asian-American Toyota buyers relied more heavily on the Internet than any other Toyota customer group. Because Chinese-Americans were the largest Asian-American group, the company focused primarily on them. Chinese speakers were also the largest group among Asian immigrants to the United States. The Chinese-language site featured information about the Sienna similar to that available on the English-language Toyota website. By June 2004 approximately 1.1 percent of visitors to Toyota's main site were choosing to read the Chinese-language Sienna page over the English one, well within the company's projections.

Toyota also identified new markets for the Sienna and pinpointed demographic groups that were more inclined to buy a Toyota minivan. As a result of company research, Toyota specifically marketed the Sienna to Asian-Americans. It released a Chinese-language website to help sell the Sienna—the first time an automaker had done so to promote one of its vehicles in the American market. Toyota's research indicated that 14 percent of all Sienna buyers were Asian-American and that the Sienna was more popular in the Asian-American community than any other Toyota vehicle. Because 70 percent of Chinese-Americans had Internet access, versus a national access rate of 60 percent, the Web was seen as the ideal forum for reaching these buyers. The Internet campaign, which featured pictures of and information about the Sienna, was also a way to reach these consumers that was more cost-effective than TV advertising.

COMPETITION

By 2004 the minivan market was a crowded one, and to make matters worse the segment had seen sales decline since 2000. Adding to the pressure on Toyota was the fact that Ford introduced its new minivan, the Freestar, almost simultaneously with the new Sienna. That vehicle replaced Ford's fading Windstar line. The Chrysler Town & Country was a comparable unit already on the market. Toyota was even more concerned about the Nissan Quest, which was another Japanese-made minivan debuting at the same time and gunning for the same buyers as the Sienna. The Quest launch would be backed by a campaign that cost more than $20 million, and the vehicle was poised to be one of the Sienna's primary competitors.

Because Honda and Toyota often competed for the attention of the import-car buyer, Toyota was also concerned about the threat that Honda's Odyssey minivan posed to the Sienna. Toyota decided to give the Sienna a 3.3-liter V-6 engine to make the vehicle more powerful than the Odyssey, which used a 3.0-liter V-6. Toyota knew that it was at a disadvantage in consumer awareness. While the segment average was a healthy 48 percent, the Sienna only managed a 41 percent awareness rate prior to the "Kids Rule" campaign. In addition, many of Toyota's competitors offered incentives—for example, Chrysler offered several thousand dollars back through dealers—and Toyota had chosen not to go that route with the Sienna.

MARKETING STRATEGY

Toyota commissioned Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles to conduct the campaign, which cost more than $20 million to produce. The company had a long relationship with Saatchi & Saatchi, which had helped launch the entire Lexus brand in the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The agency had also handled the advertising for the redesigned Toyota Celica, creating a campaign that garnered a Gold Lion at the International Advertising Festival in Cannes, France, in 2002. Saatchi & Saatchi's approach was to turn brands into "lovemarks," meaning that they inspired customer devotion that endured "beyond reason."

This approach stood in contrast to Toyota's traditionally more conservative campaigns. In the 1970s and 1980s the company's primary concern was reinforcing its image as a maker of safe, dependable vehicles. This led it to feature campaigns that many saw as uninspired, or at least unadventurous. Now, however, Toyota wanted more sophisticated campaigns that showed consumers that Toyota cars could be fun to drive and stylish to look at. The light touch of the "Kids Rule" campaign, which relied on humor to attract kids and families, was an example of this.

While the campaign was focused on a series of television spots, it also featured a number of unorthodox efforts. The Sienna became the official sponsor of Yahoo!'s Yahooligans! Book Club, which was geared toward kids and families, precisely the audience Toyota was after. Sienna ad banners ran on the Book Club's website as well as on the Yahoo! homepage. Additionally, advertisements for the Sienna were included in the "wish list" E-mails that kids using the site were encouraged to send their parents. Toyota sponsored "Live Your Best Life," a tour of self-help speeches and seminars organized by television personality Oprah Winfrey and aimed at women, especially mothers. Another innovative idea was Toyota's sponsorship of a series of Time for Kids Extra! magazines. These publications, an offshoot of Time Warner's Time, were distributed to a large audience of some 3 million students and their parents. Each eight-page issue was packed with interesting bits of information about the world. These advertising tactics helped Toyota reach new customers, which was important because the minivan segment was so competitive, with several new vehicles launching in a short period despite sagging sales across the segment.

The key to the campaign was a series of television spots centered on children. These commercials ran on kid-oriented networks such as Nickelodeon and the Discovery Channel. In one spot a group of young girls invaded a Sienna design session, demanding extra cup-holders and other kid-friendly features for the vehicle. Another depicted a young boy acting as a "salesman" for the car, paying special attention to the vehicle's roominess, which made it easier for passengers to avoid their little sisters. In yet another spot a little girl strapped her doll and teddy bear into the Sienna for a crash test. After each emerged unscathed, the girl sat them down for a tea party. Other spots repeated the formula of young actors talking up child-friendly aspects of the car.

Each spot closed with the tagline "Kids Rule." The commercials walked a fine line, mixing humor but still underscoring Toyota's reputation for safety. While kids might want a fun car, parents were interested in keeping their children safe. Because the minivan segment was primarily aimed at families with children, any campaign would have to reassure parents that their children would be protected. Toyota's playful spot featuring the teddy bear and doll crash-test team was a good example of how Toyota was able to use a light touch to reinforce the brand's strong record for quality.

OUTCOME

The campaign was wildly successful. Sienna's sales went up 119 percent after the launch, while its competitors took a tumble. The Quest underperformed in its debut, selling 30,448 units, well below Nissan's target of 80,000 to 85,000. Meanwhile, Chrysler's Town & Country saw sales decline 7.5 percent, and Ford's Freestar sold 17.5 percent less than its predecessor, the Windstar, had. Many observers gave direct credit for the Sienna's success to the "Kids Rule" campaign. The campaign was also a hit with critics, and it won a Silver EFFIE Award from the New York American Marketing Association in 2005.

Toyota addressed the Sienna's awareness problem; from the prelaunch period to June 2004 its ad awareness jumped 99 percent. Total sales for 2004 reached 157,587 units, a significant rise from the previous year's 104,378 units sold. USA Today also reported that, based on the results of its Ad Track surveys, the "Kids Rule" campaign was among the 10 most likeable ads of 2003.

THE ROAD IS CALLING CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW

In 1989 Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., boldly placed itself in direct competition with such automakers as Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) and Mercedes Benz when it launched Lexus, a new division of near-luxury cars. A precedent was set, and fellow Japanese automakers Honda and Nissan would soon follow with their own divisions to compete in the lucrative over-$35,000 car market. Among the Lexus lines, the ES proved immensely popular, providing for approximately 50 percent of all Lexus sales by 1996. Hoping to increase sales for the already popular ES 300, Toyota released a campaign titled "The Road Is Calling."

The campaign debuted on October 10, 1996, across television, print, outdoor, interactive, and direct-marketing mediums. The ad agency Team One Advertising created the $60 million campaign to shake the cold, unemotional image that some had associated with the ES 300. For the campaign Team One put a captivating new spin on the typical car-zipping-along-a-scenic-landscape approach to car ads. In TV spots for "The Road Is Calling," celebrity actors, including Demi Moore and John Cleese, uttered voice-over lines scripted for such roads as the Autobahn and Fifth Avenue. By craftily choosing stars whose voices corresponded with a given aspect of the Lexus image, Team One portrayed the ES 300 as a tantalizing entity, one that even a road could fall in love with. The tagline was "The road is calling. Answer it." Bold, aggressive, and provocative, the enticing spots increased consumer awareness of the ES 300 as a car that represented luxury, performance, and value. The campaign concluded in 1998.

Not only did ad critics praise "The Road Is Calling," but also, more than 1,100 advance orders for the new ES 300 were placed before the car was made available at dealerships. Two months after the campaign began, Lexus's segment share increased 5 percent and sales were 32 percent greater than expected by Toyota's executives. Company representatives and Team One deemed the campaign a triumph.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

When Toyota introduced its Lexus division in 1989, it faced an uphill challenge toward an upscale image. Toyota had earned a long-standing reputation for producing reliable, dependable, and unassuming cars. After investing $500 million in research and development to create the Lexus division, Toyota had to create an image that would not be regarded as the Toyota in emperor's clothes. In addition, the company had to press to stay ahead of its traditional competitors, Honda and Nissan, who were quick on the heels of Toyota in launching their own near-luxury divisions, Acura and Infiniti.

Toyota did not allow its conservative, unpretentious reputation or the slowing of the go-go 1980s economy to dispel a dream of developing a car that could go tire-to-tire with such European luxury cars as Mercedes Benz, BMW, and Porsche. Undaunted by a marked slow down in conspicuous consumption in the United States, Toyota chairman Eiji Toyoda told Fortune magazine, "The people who have been buying our cars were moving up in life. We wanted to meet their heightened needs."

To introduce a near-luxury car at a dramatically lower price than its German competitors, Lexus had to shape a compelling new image. Research had shown that the older-age market for luxury cars in the United States would not be easily seduced away from their love affair with Cadillacs and Lincolns. Existing owners of high-end German cars, a market deeply tied to established status symbols, would be no less difficult to convert. There was, however, that little niche acknowledged by Toyota chairman Toyoda: the younger buyer moving up in life who wanted a true luxury car but who could not yet afford it.

In an utterly self-confident move, Lexus staged its debut to the press in Germany, the homeland of its targeted competition. U.S. industry journalists from such publications as Car and Driver and Road & Track were flown into Frankfurt for an exhilarating, heady five days of competitive driving in cars by Lexus, BMW, Jaguar, and Mercedes. From slow cruising along the Rhine to testing mettle on the Autobahn, the newborn Lexus captured attention for its serene quiet and stability at blinding speeds.

An aura of anticipation was generated for Lexus's American debut. A massive direct-mailing targeted 250,000 prospective consumers. In August dealers were given the nod to sell the new cars as soon as they rolled onto the lot, one month before the official introduction. Creating image lust was paramount for Lexus. Team One's objective was to bathe the Lexus in an image of quality, luxury, and dependability. They put together a tagline that would epitomize what Lexus had to offer: "The relentless pursuit of perfection."

By 1997 Team One's image for the ES 300 had shifted, adding style and performance to an earlier emphasis on safety and style. Through evocative narration from the road's perspective, "The Road Is Calling" spots deftly rolled a message of luxury, performance, safety, and value into one desirable car.

TARGET MARKET

Team One's primary goal with its "The Road Is Calling" campaign was to keep existing Lexus owners coming back for more, with a secondary goal of luring new owners away from competitive luxury cars like the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, Volvo 850, Infiniti I30, Acura TL, and Cadillac Catera. Surveying had shown Team One that buyers owning or considering these brands were demo-graphically similar and that they were open to trading across the segment.

Affluence and image were key components in pinpointing demographics. The primary target average was a 49-year-old, college-educated, professional, married male with a median household income of $104,000. Psychologically, this audience was colored by a young mindset, a love of travel, and an active lifestyle. They were already driving a near-luxury, midluxury, or Japanese midsize car and were confident and comfortable about their professional and personal life.

To attract this attitude-demanding audience, Team One set out to fashion a new air of excitement about the tried and true ES. They had to portray the ES 300 as a multifaceted car, one promising a sporty performance wrapped in a luxurious package while offering a good value. A look at the Nielsen ratings suggested "The Road Is Calling" would reach this audience with spots on NBC's Thursday night lineup of Friends, Seinfeld, and ER. Print ads were widely targeted at various segments of this market in business, sports, travel, food and wine, and home magazines.

Although the target market had been pinpointed as primarily male, Lexus aimed at women buyers as well, sponsoring such promotional events as Bon Appeétit's seventh annual Wine & Spirits Focus tours and a retrospective of fashion photography. Steve Sturm, Lexus's corporate marketing manager, told Advertising Age, "Traditionally, buyers of luxury cars are men, but we're reaching out now specifically to women who have their own income, their own sense of style for luxury cars."

In targeting a younger, hipper audience, Team One began to de-emphasize the Lexus as a sophisticated, mature product. In a 1997 spot entitled "Video Noise," a montage of futuristic imagery and alternative music were used to attract younger buyers to Lexus GS, LS, and RX models. Tom Cordner, cochairman and executive creative director for Team One, explained to Adweek, "The market is a little fickle now. People are in search of a brand of car, and they're experimenting more, and you want to grab their attention. At one point, they had an impression of Lexus, and we're a totally different company in terms of attitude. This was an opportunity to say to the world, 'Here is a new Lexus.' We are reaching down to a younger, hipper audience in an attempt to attract buyers we previously had not connected with."

COMPETITION

Lexus was not alone in recognizing and targeting the spending power of a more youthful audience in 1997. In Crain's Detroit Business, Lexus's Steve Sturm said, "The higher in price you go, the more competitive it gets. All of us are participating in a changing marketplace, and we have more changes in [model year] 1998 than any year in history. We are broadening our image to be younger, more energetic in approach."

Lexus's major competitors had their sights aimed at just this market in both ads and promotional sponsorship. In spots energized by racing camera angles and spirited music, BMW simulated the feel of being behind the wheel, nudging a new generation into Beemer lust. In a spin on a sophisticated wine tasting, the car company sponsored a "BMW Tasting" in a cooperative effort with Food & Wine. For the price of a test-drive, prospective buyers received free cooking pans from the magazine. Nordstrom department stores and upscale gadget retailer Hammacher Schlemmer were also the scene of BMW's special promotions. "These events don't attract huge crowds, but that's not our goal," said Rich Brooks, BMW's marketing and events communications manager, to Advertising Age. "The intimate setting lets us talk to high-end buyers in unique settings that suit their outlooks and lifestyles."

Mercedes underscored its reputation for elegance by sponsoring a series of co-op literary events with Condé Nast. Groups of subscribers to Allure, Architectural Digest, Condé Nast Traveler, Gourmet, Vanity Fair, and Vogue were invited to exclusive restaurants to rub elbows with author Gay Talese.

The near-luxury marketplace in 1997 was the most competitive segment among luxury manufacturers. Lexus had to contend with the emergence of the sport-utility vehicle as the new vehicle of privilege, in addition to vying for market share with their traditional competitors. Infiniti's I30 was a major competitor in the value-oriented market; Acura's TL, Audi's A4, and Volvo's 850 were gaining in visibility; BMW and Mercedes were both gaining market share after a five-year decline; and Cadillac's Catera was rumored to be lobbing a direct hit at Lexus.

MARKETING STRATEGY

Lexus and Team One pulled out all the stops in marketing the ES 300 in what would be the most integrated launch campaign in Lexus's history. The approximately $60 million campaign, which included television, print, outdoor, interactive, event, and direct-marketing mediums, was developed to express ES 300's well-rounded qualities of luxury, performance, safety, and value. It was released on October 10, 1996.

Team One's challenge was to dramatize these qualities and increase awareness of the brand. Their approach in "The Road Is Calling" was innovative. The list of car ads that featured sleek, out-of-focus, mysterious vehicles gliding down a curvaceous highway was endless, but when had the road had a say about the sexy stuff going on its blacktop? In a series of spots, Team One handed the stage to famous roads. Through the voice-overs of equally well-known celebrities, the featured roads responded passionately to playing host to the ES 300.

Via the posh voice of Frasier star Kelsey Grammer, Fifth Avenue was the essence of elegance. Grammer's patrician voice lent dignity to the Avenue's boredom with its day-to-day life … until the new ES 300 rolled its way. Finally, it encountered something "worthy of its asphalt." The car's performance was praised in spots featuring the Autobahn (Jeremy Irons) and the Brooklyn Bridge (Joe Pesci). Irons/Autobahn taunted, "Do you think you have what it takes to tame me?" and closed the spot by laughing, "Come back. I let you win this time." The Brooklyn Bridge, aka Joe Pesci, challenged the ES's ability to maintain a smooth ride with a tough-guy brashness and a surface pocked with potholes. "You want a piece a' me?… I got your suspension right here!" Valencia Gayles, Team One account supervisor, spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the Pesci spot. "He has the quintessential tough-guy voice. We look for celebrity voices that correspond to the personality of the road." One of the campaign's final spots, "Canterbury," featured John Cleese extolling the ES's safety under pressure, whereas "Wall Street" had a bullish response to the model's value. Each spot ended with the tagline "The Road Is Calling. Answer It," enticing consumers to identify not only with the car's image, but also with that of the accommodating (or challenging) road traversed. Enticement was the theme of "The Road Is Calling" print ads as well, with the road beckoning the ES in such come-hither catchphrases as "Pick Me," "Feed Me," "Yoo-Hoo," and "Take Me, I'm Yours."

A ROAD LESS TRAVELED

"Come closer. Come closer. There. I'm the road and I'm so bored. It's been so long since someone new came into my life and hugged me, caressed me, and excited me." Such were the sad, lonely longings uttered by Demi Moore as the famous Monterey, California, byway in the "17-Mile Drive" segment of "The Road Is Calling." Alas, although the 17-mile stretch of road was amply sated when the ES 300 slipped along its asphalt, it would be but a brief encounter. Lexus had to pull the "17-Mile Drive" spot soon after its original airing, when Cadillac bought all filming rights to 17-Mile Drive.

Brand ads for the Lexus LS 400 depicted the ultimate intimate relationship between driver and car. In "Running Man" and "Seamless," the driver literally blended right in, visually becoming one with his Lexus. The work of makeup artist Joanne Gall, who had painted actress Demi Moore's body for an infamous Vanity Fair cover, was matched by the tagline, "You've never felt this connected to a car." Sturm told Adweek, "We have an all-new car from the inside out, and we wanted to make a dramatic and dynamic statement."

Commercials for the Lexus GS sport sedan were equally bewitching. In Automotive News, Bob Garfield described the haunting spots as "Edward Gorey meets William Shakespeare meets Charles Addams meets Tim Burton." An ominous female voice warned, "Ill winds mark its fearsome flight, and autumn branches creak with fright. The landscape turns to ashen crumbs, when something wicked this way comes." Then came a tagline that could give the highway patrol something to worry about: "Introducing the 300 horsepower V-8 Lexus GS. The fastest automatic sedan in the world."

The highly integrated campaign had been inaugurated by what Team One believed to be a first-ever advance E-mailing to consumers. Targeted were owners of rival cars who had stopped by Lexus's website, where a virtual test-drive was being offered. At the same time, Lexus mailed product brochures and interactive promotional videos to existing owners in advance of the ad launch.

Considered together, Team One's 1997 Lexus advertisements were tinged with a beguiling brand identity. Lexus and its major competitors were following an emerging trend in automotive advertising, that of brand building. With Lexus and its competitors all offering dazzling performance and style, the key to registering in consumer consciousness was to align the brand name with desirability. Lexus's 1998 decision to "relaunch" its original tagline, "The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection" was a direct effort to reestablish a brand identity that had held the test of time. "The Road Is Calling" ended in 1998.

OUTCOME

With the beckon "The Road Is Calling. Answer it," Lexus's ES 300 was introduced with an attitude of energetic enticement. The campaign positioned the ES 300 as the most successful launch in Lexus's history. Amid an arena crowded with competitors, the ES moved up the scale of consumer awareness thanks to the marketing efforts of the campaign. Dealership traffic was brisk, and all sales goals were exceeded during the launch time frame. The ES 300 continued to surpass monthly sales goals well beyond the initial push of the launch.

The ES 300 introduction generated an impressive level of consumer demand. Direct E-mailing and interactive promotions resulted in more than 1,100 advance orders before the ES even reached the showroom. During the first two months segment share increased from 7 percent to 12 percent, and the first six months' sales objective was exceeded by an average of 32 percent. In fact, consumer demand dramatically outpaced supply, necessitating a scaling back of advertising to allow for the limited supply.

Results of the Allison Fisher Awareness and Purchase Intention Data Study were equally decisive. The study found that demand for the ES was generated immediately upon launch, with shopping intentions moving up for four consecutive months. The ES was successful in attracting existing ES owners while also gaining share from the competition's Infiniti I30, Acura TL, Mercedes C-Class, and Volvo 850. The campaign's goal of increasing an image of good value scored high, with the ES's "reasonably priced" rating elevated to an all-time high. The performance image was also enhanced, with the model receiving its highest-ever rating for "excellent acceleration." The ES 300 gained a marked lead in the near-luxury segment in both awareness and familiarity, 10 points higher than the nearest competitor. Lexus's ad recall increased for 1997, primarily as a result of the ES 300's "The Road Is Calling" campaign.

Across the board, Team One's ads for Lexus models met with critical success. The agency's ads were seen as stylishly provocative, and Team One received the most awards from the 1997 International Automotive Advertising Awards.

Team One Advertising and Lexus had set out to inject the company's image of elegance, safety, and dependability with a fresh shot of youthful energy. "The Road Is Calling" hit this mark in spades by targeting a younger market and repainting Lexus as a near-luxury car that could deliver performance and pleasure. After the campaign's second year U.S. sales for Lexus were 60 percent higher in 1998 than they had been in 1997. December sales for the ES 300 during the campaign's final year were 2.7 percent greater than the previous December's ES 300 sales.