Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Table of Contents
Toyota Hybrid Range Fall in Love with Driving Again Campaign...........3
Toyota Hybrid Range Context............................................................................. 3
Customer Behaviour........................................................................................ 3
Toyota Hybrid Range Communications Objectives..............................................4
Toyota Hybrid Range Communications Strategy and Positioning........................5
Toyota Hybrid Range Communications Methods.................................................7
Print Adverts.................................................................................................... 7
TV Adverts....................................................................................................... 7
Online Adverts................................................................................................. 7
Outdoor Adverts.............................................................................................. 7
Sponsorship..................................................................................................... 8
Digital PR......................................................................................................... 8
Scheduling.......................................................................................................... 8
Resources........................................................................................................... 9
Financial Resources......................................................................................... 9
Human Resources............................................................................................ 9
Control, Evaluation and Feedback......................................................................9
Managing Corporate Reputation...................................................................10
Charities that Toyota Support...........................................................................10
Derbyshire Wildlife Trust................................................................................ 10
Toyota good causes.......................................................................................... 10
Environment.................................................................................................. 10
References........................................................................................................ 12
Appendices........................................................................................................ 15
Customer Behaviour
Both the Yaris and Auris models were initially non-hybrid and are currently on
sale in both forms, clearly using psychographic segmentation; environmentally
aware customers and those who seek more excitement from a car: the fastest
petrol engine Auris has a faster 0-60 time than the fastest hybrid Auris, by 0.4
seconds (Toyota 2014), and all the Hybrid cars offering considerably less C0
emissions, such as the 5 door hatchback Auris Icon Hybrid, releasing 50 g/km
less than its petrol engine counterpart (Toyota 2015).
However, theres further segmentation criteria with regards to the Toyota Hybrid
range, such as price. With regards to starting prices the Hybrid options are
considerably more expensive, with the cheapest Auris Hybrid having a retail
price of 19, 864.79 and the cheapest Auris with a petrol engine having a retail
price of 14, 164.19 (Toyota 2015). However, the Hybrid options do make this
money back in the long run as they are more fuel efficient; with the Toyota Auris
Excel petrol engine offering 68.9 mpg, and the Hybrid engine offering 78.5 mpg
(Toyota 2014). As well as the Hybrid range potentially being a cheaper option as
a company car, with the average company car tax for the Auris Excel petrol
engine being 19%, and the Hybrid option only being 11% (Toyota 2014), making
a considerable difference when contemplating the cost of a new car.
Furthermore, a new car is typically a high involvement purchasing meaning that
the D.M.P is extended, particularly the information search element. This could
prove to be highly beneficial for the Toyota Hybrid range as a prolonged research
period will allow for the benefits of the Toyota Hybrid range to stand out more,
particularly as the range of cars offered with a hybrid engine has significantly
improved recently; with Toyota now including the Prius+, a 7 seat option suitable
for larger families who might previously have been deterred (Toyota N.D1).
(Appendix 1)
The use of the slogan Fall in Love with Driving Again, also represents the
reinforcement aspects of Toyotas objectives. This is because it in itself
references past enjoyments of driving, that appears to have been replaced with
stress and practicality. Appendix 2 represents this trend with the four most
sought after features relating to practicality as oppose to enjoyment or comfort.
(Appendix 2)
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Figure
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(Figures 1 and 2: Perceptual Maps of the whole passenger vehicle market using main companies)
However, Toyota have a rather negative brand image and position with regard to
their hybrid range. This is largely due to opinion formers such as Jeremy Clarkson
offering rather negative opinions of hybrid cars as a whole, but more specifically,
Toyota hybrid cars: Toyota had just about convinced the world that if you
wanted a hybrid you could pretty much kiss goodbye to the concept of fun
(Clarkson 2014). Opinion formers and leaders offering these negative views have
led to negative views for not only Toyota but also Hybrid cars, and has led to
many negative preconceptions for the Toyota Hybrid range.
However, the communications strategy in the Fall in Love with Driving Again
campaign largely relates to enjoyment and exuberance. This is largely an
attempt from Toyota to reposition their hybrid range as a more enjoyable brand,
without having to compromise either their practicality or their overall image as
an environmental company. Their Fall in Love with Driving Again
communications attempt to create a positivity towards this range in a number of
ways, most significantly, their sponsorship of movies on ITV (see appendix 4)
which is clearly an attempt to align the Toyota Hybrid range with enjoyment.
Furthermore, the online PR Toyota uses for this campaign further highlights this
repositioning attempt as for the large part it relates to enjoyment and relaxation
(Saatchi & Saatchi N.D). This rebranding attempt is considerably similar to the
successful repositioning that Volvo undertook in the early 90s with their car, the
Volvo 850 (Newton and Iddiols 1993), in which Volvo where able to successfully
adapt their brand image to being more than simply safety.
Print Adverts
Several print adverts were featured throughout this campaign and featured in
both newspapers and magazines (see difference in print quality between
appendices 3 and 5). Although several of these adverts included the slogan to
elicit an emotional response towards the advert, they all referenced the financial
aspects of the Toyota Hybrid Range (see appendix 3) representing the
significance of rationality. Informing viewers about features and offers relating to
the Toyota Hybrid range has largely been done to provide potential customers
with a sense of security and trust towards the Hybrid range, again due to the
high-involvement nature of purchasing a new car. However, they still incorporate
the emotional approach via the slogan (see appendix 6) representing their
attempt to reposition their hybrid range as being more interesting and exciting.
TV Adverts
The TV adverts release integrate both rational and emotional approaches. They
primarily use visuals for the emotional approach and the copywriting for the
rational, often using small print at the bottom (see appendix 8). Furthermore, the
two main TV adverts used for this campaign both involve humour that relates to
driving; one features a man enjoying driving in frantic Asian city (see appendix
9), with the others featuring several people driving around Europe singing along
to a famous song (see appendix 10). This is an effective emotional approach as
light-hearted message appeals secure audience attention, increase
memorability, overcome sales resistance, and enhance message
persuasiveness (Scott, Klein, Bryant 1990: 498). However, the second TV advert
had a poor impact as the Advertising Standards Agency banned it for depicting
dangerous driving (Mortimer 2014).
Online Adverts
The online adverts for this campaign are for the most part rich banner ads and all
appear to have been featured on Toyotas company website;
http://www.toyota.co.uk/. These rich banner ads seem to follow the same
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pattern; initiate with an emotional approach and follow up with their rational and
approach (see appendix 11). This structure follows the traditional AIDA model: to
gain attention, create an interest, cause desire and encourage an action
(Moriarty, Mitchell, Wells 2012: 131). Appendix 11 is a typical banner advert for
this campaign. The first two stills represent the emotional approach and
attempts to get the attention of viewers and gain an interest. The last still
represents the rational approach and is used to cause desire and encourage the
action of visiting the Toyota Auris Hybrid website to gain more information.
Outdoor Adverts
The majority of Toyotas outdoor advertising mirrors the design of their print
advertising and is basically offered in a different format (see appendices 7 and
3). For analysis see print adverts section.
Sponsorship
This campaign also featured one direct sponsorship and coincided with another
UK Toyota sponsorship. The Toyota Auris Hybrid sponsors movies on ITV (see
appendices 4 and 12) with either 5 or 10 second videos featuring the car with
green screened backgrounds, depicting movie clichs (see appendix 4). This
sponsorship clearly represents Toyotas attempt to reposition themselves as a
more exciting car brand as it aligns them with an enjoyable past time of movies.
This campaign also overlapped with Toyotas corporate sponsorship of Derby
County Football Club, which includes sponsoring the west stand of their stadium
(Toyota N.D3). This again is Toyota aligning themselves with an enjoyable
pastime in an attempt to reposition themselves as a fun company.
Digital PR
As part of this Fall in Love with Driving Again campaign also featured a video
titled Toyota: The Hybrid Experiment being uploaded onto YouTube and has
been embedded onto many supporting websites such as Saatchi & Saatchis
website (see appendix 13). This video featured several regular people (not
actors), driving around Rome in their own cars, appearing stressed, and
afterwards driving a Toyota Hybrid, appearing much calmer (Youtube 2014). This
video is again represents Toyotas attempt to reposition themselves as a more
enjoyable car company as well as attempting to create brand preference by
representing them as favourable over other cars.
Scheduling
Toyota initiated their Fall in Love with Driving Again on the 17 th of April 2014 by
uploading their digital experiment onto their YouTube account (Saatchi &
Saatchi 2014). Toyota followed this with their sponsorship of ITV movies which
began on the 21st of April 2014 (Creative Club 2015).
Their initial TV advert (appendix 8) was first broadcast on the 11 th of June 2014
(Creative Club 2015), the day prior to the 2014 Football World Cup (BBC 2014).
This is likely to have happened to maximise reach with viewing figures for the
World Cup peaking at 20.64 million in the UK (Wyatt 2014). Several months later
Toyota released a second advert which was banned by ASA in October 2014
(Mortimer 2014).
In 2014 Toyota also released several pieces of outdoor advertising for their
hybrid range starting with a simplistic advert (see appendix 14) on the 10 th of
February 2014. However, they released their first billboard advert for their Fall in
Love with Driving Again campaign (see appendix 15) on the 27 th of May 2014
(Creative Club 2015). This follows a similar timeline as their print advertisements
which commenced on the 9th of May (Creative Club 2015) with a double page
advert (see appendix 16) for their Fall in Love with Driving Again campaign.
These are most likely used as supporting work for their digital campaign as all
these adverts encourage the action of visiting Toyotas website where all their
online ads are placed as well as their experiment.
Resources
Financial Resources
Toyota are a leading company in the automotive industry currently holding a
4.00% market share in the highly congested passenger vehicle market (Toyota
Media 2015). They also made a 128,071,738,088 profit in the 2014 financial
year (Toyota 2014b: 63) and in total, sold 94, 013 cars in 2014 (Toyota Media
2015). Furthermore, Toyota spend a lot of their money on advertising with the
most recently published figures being $2.09 globally on advertising (Perez 2014),
$959 million of which, was spent on TV advertising alone (Perez 2014).
Human Resources
This campaign has primarily been run by the advertising and communications
agency Saatchi & Saatchi Italy, with Saatchi & Saatchi London being in charge of
the online elements of this campaign (Lepitak 2014), including Toyotas
experiment. Saatchi & Saatchi also partnered with Goldsmiths University of
London to help gather research and conduct several experiments for this Toyota
campaign (Saatchi & Saatchi 2014). Lloyd Salmons, the Digital Director at
Saatchi & Saatchi stated that they made the experiment as oppose to just
advertising because It is important that the emotional benefits of driving Hybrid
vehicles speak for themselves rather than dictate to consumers how they should
feel when driving. (Saatchi & Saatchi 2014). Toyota also used Zenith Optimedia
as their media buying company (Brand Republic 2014)
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Environment
The majority of the good causes Toyota support relate to the environment and
sustainability. TMUK have created a Sustainable Plant programme (Toyota UK
N.D6) which aims to make the production of their cars more ecological and
sustainable. This Sustainable Plant programme consists of 3 Pillars (Toyota
UK N.D6): Leading Environmental Performance, Increasing Use of Renewable
Energy and being In harmony with our natural surroundings (Toyota UK N.D6).
This devotion to the environment is why Toyota created an array of solar
panels at their Deeside Engine Plant (Toyota UK N.D7). This array consists of
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12, 680 solar panels, which provides Toyota with enough energy to build 22, 500
engines (Toyota UK N.D7). Furthermore, in 2004 Toyota and the Derbyshire
Wildlife Trust worked in partnership to create the Biodiversity Initiative (Toyota
UK N.D8). The aims of this initiative were to protect and where possible,
enhance the ecological value of the site (Toyota UK N.D8), which resulted in
Toyota building an on site wildlife reserve (Toyota UK N.D8). By supporting
these types of good causes, Toyota is again validating their Hybrid range by
forming an ecological and environmental brand image.
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References
Brand Republic (2014) Top 10 ads of the week: Aldis World Cup cider ad scores
with consumers [online] available from
<http://www.brandrepublic.com/article/1302912/top-10-ads-week-aldis-worldcup-cider-ad-scores-consumers> [14/03/2015]
Lepitak, S; (2014) Toyota releases Fall in Love with Driving Again Campaign to
promote Hybrid cars across Europe; TheDrum.com [online] available from
<http://www.thedrum.com/news/2014/04/21/toyota-releases-fall-love-drivingagain-campaign-promote-hybrid-cars-across-europe> [14/03/2015]
Newton, S; Iddiols, D; (1993) From hearses to horses: launching the Volvo 850;
Journal of the Market Research Society 35 (2); 145-159
Saatchi & Saatchi (2014) Fall in Love with Driving Again [online] available from
<http://saatchi.com/en-uk/news/fall-in-love-with-driving-again/> [13/03/2015]
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Saatchi & Saatchi (N.D) Toyota Fall in Love with Driving Again [online] available
from <http://saatchi.co.uk/en-gb/work/toyota-biometrics/#> [11/03/2015]
The BBC (2014) 2014 FIFA World Cup Schedule [online] available from
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/world-cup/2014/schedule/group-stage>
[14/03/2015]
Toyota (2014b) Toyota 2014 Financial Year Report [online] available from
<http://www.toyota-global.com/investors/ir_library/annual/pdf/2014/ar14_e.pdf>
[14/03/2015]
Toyota (2015) New Price List [online] available from <http://s3-eu-west1.amazonaws.com/cdnlive.toyotaretail.co.uk/PriceList/Current_NewCarPrices.pdf> [11/03/2015]
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Wyatt, D; (2014) BBC coverage trounces ITV in World Cup final viewing figures;
The Independent [online] available from <http://www.independent.co.uk/artsentertainment/tv/news/bbc-coverage-trounces-itv-in-world-cup-final-viewingfigures-9604484.html> [14/03/2015]
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Appendices
(Appendix 1: http://academic.mintel.com/display/730417/)
(Appendix 2: http://academic.mintel.com/display/730417/)
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(Appendix 3: https://www.creativeclub.co.uk/fs.aspx)
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(Appendix 4: https://www.creativeclub.co.uk/fs.aspx)
(Appendix 5: https://www.creativeclub.co.uk/fs.aspx)
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(Appendix 6: https://www.creativeclub.co.uk/fs.aspx)
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(Appendix 7: https://www.creativeclub.co.uk/fs.aspx)
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(Appendix 8: https://www.creativeclub.co.uk/fs.aspx)
(Appendix 9: https://www.creativeclub.co.uk/fs.aspx)
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