Brand: 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.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Toyota. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.