48 Hours
Issue 13 | December 2009
Agency
Rapp, El Segundo, CA
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director: Nick Platt, Creative Director: Chad Cipoletti, Art Director: Maryam Mohseni Copywriter: Matt Blint
Production Team
Agency Producer: Derik Parrent, Director: Kevin Ward, Producer: Maria Whitaker, Editor: Rich Marchewka
Date
From October 2009
Background
The 2010 Toyota 4Runner is the fifth generation 4Runner. Owners of early generation 4Runners are rabid about the performance and history of their vehicle. They join fan clubs, trail teams, post videos, blog, tweet and generally obsess over the car. The launch of the 2010 4Runner needed to match the passion and authenticity of the 4Runner base and introduce the fifth generation 4Runner as true to the 4Runner badge.
Idea
The fifth generation is the most capable 4Runner ever produced. To demonstrate this fact, four current 4Runner owners were invited to test-drive the new vehicle over the course of 48 hours.
Holly, Dave, Dan and Nathan were brought together for a two-day adventure test-drive. Every comment, opinion and conversation was unscripted and ultimately revealed that this vehicle was genuinely true to the 4Runner heritage.
What was also revealed was how each of the drivers was impressed with a completely different aspect of the car.
Seven different videos were edited. Two were used in the pre-launch phase to build buzz. Four then focused on individual reactions to different aspects of the 2010 4Runner and a seventh longer video was cut to tell the story from beginning to end.
These videos were released over the course of two months in a variety of different mediums including YouTube, Toyota Behind the Wheel, blogs, owner Facebook profiles, Twitter and finally on the launch website.
Results
As yet unknown
Our Thoughts
If you go to YouTube you can see that one of the videos has had 56,000 views, another 25,000. Here and there, all in all, the videos have been watched upwards of 150,000 times. Small bananas, you may think. Except that the people watching these videos are actively choosing to watch them; are active 4Runner fans and have a thirst for information. Convert 10% of them at launch and you have a success on your hands.
This is a clear case of building awareness rather than trying to drive sales but the idea of talking only to those people who will be most interested in the message, and reaching them online, is very direct.
This campaign helps explain the diminishing power of TV as a medium. Why spend money addressing people who aren’t interested when you can find the people who mean most to the brand elsewhere?