Archive for the 'Toyota' Category

Commentary: Why Things Will Get Worse for Toyota, Not Better

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Issue: Toyota has fallen victim to brand hubris, and is feeling the consequencesCamry
Commentary by: David Vinjamuri

Toyota’s recall of 2.3 million vehicles, and the unprecedented step of halting production at six of its U.S. plants may seem like the inflection point in its quality crisis.  Although the sudden acceleration claims have been circulating for at least three years, Toyota appears to be taking the problem seriously and responding strongly.  A parallel might be drawn with the 1982 Tylenol recall, where J&J chairman Jim Burke took the unprecedented step extending a local criminal issue into a national recall to avoid a loss of confidence in the brand (or copycat acts) and used the entire J&J workforce to physically remove the product from shelves.  (Ironically, J&J is currently experiencing another crisis with Tylenol.)

Unfortunately, Toyota’s current crisis is headed in a different direction.  Two minor facts in the news give us evidence that Toyota is in for more trouble.  First, The New York Times notes that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood asserted on a Chicago radio show that the U.S. government requested the work halt - disputing assertions by Toyota North American COO Jim Lentz that the production stoppage was purely Toyota’s initiative.

The second minor news item was the assertion by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak that he has found a reproducible, software-based error causing unintended acceleration in his 2010 Prius, a car not on the recall list.

Either of these assertions may prove to be incorrect, but the mere fact that they’ve both reached the national news media suggests that Toyota has a bigger problem: brand hubris.

Brand hubris, shortly stated, is the tendency of successful brands to believe that they’re infallible in the areas of their greatest strength.  This puts them at greater risk of a catastrophic error.  A good example from the last decade was Dell, which once had an unassailable reputation for quality and customer service which was brought down by a single blogger (Jeff Jarvis).

In Toyota’s case, their sterling reputation for quality led to a customer service apparatus unable to comprehend the concept that a major error could have made it through their system undiscovered.  This attitude dictated the company’s response to early complaints - rejection and legal squabbling and forced the issue to bubble into a crisis before senior management would acknowledge it.

That same attitude guided the company when it refused to engage with Steve Wozniak, and kept it from getting its story straight with the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration.   Both of those were costly PR mistakes.  For this reason, it seems likely that Toyota’s problems will multiply, not ameliorate.

The lesson for other brands is this: don’t assume that you can’t screw up, even in the areas of your biggest strength.  Reward those who identify problems early.  Realize that some of the most important information on the quality of your products comes from your customers and don’t punish customers who take the time to complain.

Posted in commentary, Toyota | 2 Comments »

Toyota Tacoma in the World of Warcraft

Thursday, October 18th, 2007

wow.jpgBrand: Toyota Tacoma (Toyota)
Execution: TV
Target: Young Men
Rating: ****
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
The spot opens up showing a World of Warcraft game screen with three players.  They are chatting as they might do during a game session for this massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG).   The three are preparing to battle a dragon.  The first says, “I’ve gone ahead and equipped my Epic Axe.”  The second, (a female avatar but a male voice) replies, “switching to explosive arrows.”  The third says, “Yeah, I’m gonna equip myself with a little - uh - FOUR WHEELS OF FURY!!”  and suddenly his character is inside an animated Toyota Tacoma.  “No Way,” the first character says.  “There’s no trucks in World of Warcraft,” the second complains.  The character drives forward in the Toyota until he confronts the dragon, saying “let’s do this!”  The dragon swallows the Toyota Tacoma and the other two characters groan.  A moment later the dragon clutches his chest and the Tacoma bursts forth from the monster’s chest as it collapses.  The dragon’s heart is in the flatbed of the pickup.  “Did you see me lay down the Law?” the character in the Tacoma gloats, “I am the lawgiver!”  The spot ends with the Tacoma name and the Toyota Trucks logo as a character says, “I gotta get one of those.”

What Works:
This brilliant “product as hero” spot for Toyota Tacoma builds exceptionally well on a well-established campaign displaying Toyota Tacoma’s durability in cleverly imagined fantasy situations including being hit by a meteor, attacked by the Loch Ness Monster and crushed by a robot at a monster truck rally.  These spots all looked extremely realistic and gave the Toyota Tacoma a sense of being larger than life.

This new spot cleverly reverses the paradigm, putting the Tacoma into the wildly popular World of Warcraft backdrop.  Toyota shows an understanding for the environment as the action parodies real gamers realistically.  The result in the game, as in the other spots, is that the Toyota Tacoma emerges unscathed.

This interesting and clever spot will be much more arresting to the young male demographic Toyota is seeking because of its portrayal of the in-game environment of World of Warcraft.  The brand positioning is consistent with earlier executions and the pitch builds on the establishing work of the earlier spots.  Toyota again shows (as it has done consistently with the marketing for the Scion) that it understands new media environments.

What Doesn’t:
We don’t see many weaknesses in this advertising from Toyota, but it is important that Toyota continue the “fantasy tough” campaign with the elegance and flair observed in this and previous spots.

Branding Bottom Line:
Toyota finally slays the beast - but it’s not GM.

Posted in Toyota | 10 Comments »

The Many Lessons of Scion

Friday, November 10th, 2006

scion.jpgBrand: Scion (Toyota)
Execution: TV, In-Theater, Viral, Web
Target: Young, Hip & Driving
Rating: *****
Reviewer: David

Description:
Scion is an automotive brand of Toyota which has used innovative marketing techniques including viral, experiential, event marketing and branded entertainment (Scion has a record label and ‘Scion Release’ - a clothing line’). This week, Gina Chon at The Wall Street Journal reported that Scion will reduce production to avoid surpassing its target sales goal of 150,000 cars for the year. Scion will also reduced its television advertising and steer it entirely off of network television to hipster late-night cable shows like ‘Adult Swim’ on the Cartoon Netwook.

What Works:
We write about Scion not because of the advertising we link to (which will probably confuse most adults over 25) but because Scion has excellent lessons for the modern marketer. More than many other brands targeting young adults today, Scion has understood that ubiquity and brand strength are not complementary goals and has been willing to forego the former to gain the latter. The very brave decision to scale back manufacturing to avoid oversaturating the brand shows both the intelligence of Scion marketers as well as the commitment of Toyota executives to the brand promise.

What does Scion do differently? By the numbers:

  1. Thin-Slicing - We’re using this term differently than Malcolm Gladwell in Blink, but it is an equally apt description of how Scion has come to dominate a specific subculture of the youth market. Instead of lumping all teens together or blithely assuming that “trend-setters” can be identified by their number of MySpace friends, Scion thought very carefully about the attitudes and beliefs of the consumers it wanted to reach and then instead of pre-judging which people would share these it designed the product and the marketing campaign to appeal very narrowly to these people. It did not worry about broad acceptance or consider conventional taste in designing these cars, one of which looks like a toaster on wheels. Finally, the decision to scale back production when the car was set to exceed targets by 20% was a bold assertion of Scion’s willingness to leave some dollars on the table to preserve the exlusivity of the brand.
  2. CrowdSourcing - This advertising blog apologizes for picking up a buzzword, but Scion has been very clever in the way it has drawn its consumers into the brand (we could also think of this as an engineered ‘Brand Hijack’ on the terms of Alex Wipperfurth). This starts with the conception of the cars themselves. Scion realized that a huge trend among young drivers was customization. Instead of overdesigning the three Scion models, the marketers underdesigned the cars and essentially made them platforms for accessorizing (on the tC for example offers an LED light kit allowing owners to project multiple colors in the footwells of the car.) Instead of sending Scion buyers to aftermarket accessory manufacturers to personalize their cars, Scion lets them accessorize in the showroom (or on the Internet). Then Scion carefully watches how those consumers are designing their cars and uses the information to inform their marketing and product design. This means that the accesories business for Scion is higher-margin than the car sale and the flow of data to the marketing group is extremely rich. Scions marketing efforts cultivate this attachment in indirect ways as well. The Scion recording label, for instance, is dedicated to emerging artists. By supporting these artists, Scion gains cachet with them and they help Scion stay connected to the culture of its core users.
  3. Stealth Marketing - Perhaps no other $2 billion dollar brand has gone so unnoticed by so many people outside its immediate target market. The precision of Scion marketing is attested to by the fact that it has been eminently possible for many of us in the marketing profession to miss contact with the brand altogether. Scion embraces this lack of ubiquity, happily preferring to be intensely liked by the few (with just 150,000 new customers this year) rather than moderately well liked by the masses. This is a good recipe for sustained gross margins.
  4. Experimentation - Scion’s move away from mainstream television advertising and increasing focus on experiential and event marketing shows that they are not afraid to experiment and move quickly to redirect money where they have success. Nimble brands do not hesitate to make mistakes but learn from them quickly. Toyota’s willingness to allow Scion to make major commitments in marketing practices the rest of the brands do not use stands in stark contrast to the rigidity of the Sony approach to the digital music industry. As a result, Scion is poised on the top of the emerging youth car market while Sony has lost the music wars to Apple.

What Doesn’t:
The difficulty in maintaining a youth brand is that youth culture changes quickly. Scion might be smarter to age with their current audience than to attempt successive Madonna-style reinventions each decade as a new group of drivers is minted. While we feel that Scion marketing is dead-on at the moment, preferences will change as will the style of the users. We are personally waiting for those droopy pants and exposed male underwear to go the way of the Zoot Suit.

Branding Bottom Line:
Scion marketers are the smartest guys in the room.

Posted in Toyota, Scion, Press | 6 Comments »

SUPER BOWL AD: Toyota and Synergy

Monday, February 6th, 2006

Brand: Toyota Camry Hybrid
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here To View
Target: Eco-consumers
Reviewer: David
Rating: *****

Description:
“Papa, why do we have a hybrid?” a child asks as the camera pans around a Toyota Camry, highlighting the word ‘hybrid’. “For your future,” the Dad answers. “Why?” the boy probes. “It’s better for the air,” the father says as we see them on the inside of the car. “And we spend less because it runs on gas and electrical power,” he continues as we get shots of trees and an eagle cut in with the car. “Mira. Mira qui,” he says, pointing to the color information screen. “It uses both.” “Like you with English and Spanish,” the boy says. “Si,” the father says. “Why did you learn English?” the boy asks. “For your future,” the father replies. More shots of the car as we hear a voiceover saying “Coming Soon - the all-new 2007 Camry. Also available with Hybrid Synergy Drive,” we see a hybrid synergy drive logo, “Toyota - the power to move forward.”

What Works:
We are covering this spot because it broke new ground in the Super Bowl, speaking directly to the Hispanic experience in America. And also because Bob Garfield roundly panned it - deriding it as simplistic and ‘patronizing.’ We are not Hispanic (your reviewer is half-Asian, for the record) but we disagree on Garfield’s overall comments and will wait to hear from the Hispanic community for their own reaction.

Marketing on the Super Bowl is about doing the branding basics well while at the same time delivering something new or entertaining enough to break through the clutter. While this spot was not in the least entertaining, it was new. Ironically, the focused attention of the Super Bowl (where people actually stop to watch the ads) gave this spot a better showing than it might get during normal network TV - where the new ground it broke went unnoticed.

Some of what was missing in many of the spots on the Super Bowl was very evident here - namely the brand, the product and a lot of focus on a unique selling proposition.

The pitch for the Hybrid Camry was straightforward and accomplished with a metaphor. Just as English and Spanish can complement each other and an investment in English is an investment in the future for a non-native speaker, gasoline and electric power complement each other in the hybrid Camry and an investment in a hybrid is an investment in the future.

This is the right selling proposition for a hybrid as gas prices alone still don’t justify them on an economic basis (although economists have neglected to mention that it is easier for consumers to finance a more expensive vehicle over 5 years and then pay less at the pump for gas in cashflow terms).

But what about the Hispanic metaphor here? We would argue that while it is an important acknowledgement of the growing role of this community in American life, the commercial is not focused on selling Hispanic consumers hybrid cars.

Who does buy hybrid cars? Higher income and environmentally aware people (although the demographic is widening as gas prices rise). And these people are more likely to be liberal.

So yes, we are suggesting that Toyota produced - in the most innocent, inoffensive way possible - a spot targeted at liberals who will share the belief in the positive side of immigration. If you believe that immigration from the Puritans to the Irish and Italians to the present has been a source of competitive strength for the country and that the process of assimilation is good for the individual and the society, you are likely to respond to the message in this ad.

We believe this spot works because Toyota has used the newness of a commercial with some Spanish in it (although less than many Americans hear in their daily life) to communicate to the core audience for hybrid vehicles.

And let’s not forget - it is big news. A hybrid Camry brings the hybrid drive to one of the world’s best selling cars. When the sales figures are noted, it might be hard for anyone to argue that this spot was less than a success.

What Doesn’t:
This spot is super-earnest, and it is possible that it might come off as condescending to the Hispanic community, although we don’t think so. We also wouldn’t run it much outside of the Superbowl, because it looks like such an ordinary car commercial with the volume turned off that it requires focused attention to see what is new.

Toyota shared the new-hybrid spotlight with Kermit and the Ford Escape, who took a very different route to reach the same audience with the same message. This does point out that ‘Hybrid’ in itself will not remain a unique selling proposition for long.

Branding Bottom Line:
Mira - it’s a Toyota Camry Hybrid. Can you say ’sold out’?

Posted in super bowl xl, Toyota | No Comments »

Scion of the Future

Wednesday, August 24th, 2005


Brand: Scion (Toyota)
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here and Click Here
Target: Youthful Car Buyers
Rating: ****
Reviewer: David
Description:
These two spots feature the customization available for the Scion tC and the Scion xB. The spot for the tC shows it racing around an indoor course that seems both toy-like and futuristic. For the xB, the car is revealed without tires underneath a subway. Both cars dynamically metamorphise as they show the options available. The voiceover says that both cars are ready for personalization at Scion.com with over 30 accessories.

What Works:
This spot is as interesting for the vision it shows us of the future as for the brand it promotes. It is effective on both levels. The look and feel of the commercial will be unfriendly to people not in the brand community - if you do not love the idea of taking an old Civic that’s worth $8,000 and putting $30,000 of accessories into it, then this commercial may not make sense to you. On the other hand, for the car customizer it looks as if Scion has suddenly made things much easier and more interesting.

Her is what works in this spot:

  1. Positioning - Toyota is really borrowing the original Saturn brand positioning “A different kind of car. A different kind of company,” and radically altering its DNA. Scion is positioned not just to the world of car tuners but the to future of car manufacturing that they can see and understand - where every car coming off an assembly line will be unique and customized to its owner.
  2. Brand Recognition - This is a ‘product as hero’ spot so the Scions take center stage for the entire duration of each advertisment. The advantage is that because of their distinct styling, the brand imprint is strong. It would be hard to think about these commercials and not remember that they’re for Scion if you remember anything at all.
  3. Environment - Toyota does a good job of using the environment of the spot to reinforce the brand positioning. Each Scion appears in a fantasy location. In the tC spot we find ourselves on a track so fantastic that it might just be a toy racecar track turned into a real life circuit. The xB is a discarded treasure waiting to be discovered under a subway line. The morphing video effects also support this environment by making the car seem like the dream toy of every 15 year old boy. The music, lighting and shot selection all work very hard to reinforce the environment created by these commercials.

This vision is compelling because it offers the ultimate brand promise - a product made just for you, for what you need and what will make you happy.

What Doesn’t:
Customization can be a one-trick pony if Scion doesn’t keep ahead of rivals. This means more options easier to design and quicker to deliver at a fair price. Because no manufacturer selling to this crowd of extremely high-spending car buyers can fail to see the opportunity presented for add-on sales here. After you receive your customized car, Scion can keep selling you options and take back even more revenue from aftermarket shops.

By making the Scion as much a product of the purchaser’s imagination as the designer’s, Scion has given control to its users in a good way. But if that basic promise (my car, my way) stops being met, or if the reality of designing a car on the Internet and buying it is more difficult than it appears, Scion will have dug its own customized grave.

Branding Bottom Line:
Scion shows us the future and we like it.

Posted in Toyota, Scion | No Comments »