Outsmart Shout Out
Toyota Yaris
Issue 23 | May 2012
Agency
Saatchi & Saatchi London
Creative Team
Rob Potts & Andy Jex, Matthew Guy & William John
Production Team
Mathematic, MPH, WAM
Other Credits
Producers: Lexy Stingl, Greg Hemes; Account Handlers: Ben Wilkinson, Nick Gold; Social Moderators: Cubaka
Date
January 2012
Background
Toyota wanted to launch the all-new Yaris and rejuvenate the brand by talking to a younger audience. The issue was that while Toyota was respected for making good cars, they were seen as dull, particularly among the target market. Toyota needed to start a new conversation with a new youthful audience.
Idea
The strategy was to reach out to a completely new audience, people who had never had a relationship with Toyota before or who thought the brand was boring. To break these perceptions the target group had to be engaged directly.
What these people wanted was a conversation rather than the hard sell.
The creative response was to build on the success of Toyota’s existing Yaris TV campaign and create a social experience people could become part of.
Social Listening told Toyota that “Gadget and Slick”, two characters from the TV, were generating massive interest, so Toyota took advantage of this latent attraction in the characters.
Outsmart Shout Out was a live, 72-hour event in which you could send your gripes about things that annoyed you to Gadget and Slick. Every gripe received a response via e-mail or Facebook or Twiitter.
The more original the gripes got bespoke responses, written specially for them.
The Outsmart Shout Out campaign let Toyota talk to a completely new group of people and begin to transform their perceptions of Toyota.
The approach was not only a ‘first’ for Toyota but for the UK car industry too.
Results
The campaign surpassed all its KPIs.
196,898 video views on YouTube (£1.17/view)
There were 2,200 submissions of videos during the 72 hours
Conversation about Toyota increased by 8,500% on Facebook.
3,900,000 people saw something from Toyota (£0.06 spent for each view)
Along with ATL support, the campaign grew retail market share 0.8% points and Yaris is selling 40% above target in 2012.
Our Thoughts
You can feel that this campaign must have gotten the Toyota Yaris to appear younger and more hip (hop) overnight. With a nod to the Old Spice Response formula, they combined celebrity with some fun lyrics to get the attention they undoubtedly needed.