The first in the great Yaris social media race – meet Wolfy
The race is on for what may prove to be one of the oddest brand experiments in social media yet.
As part of the Toyota social media pitch, five agency campaigns will go live in the coming days, all for the same brand. Each have been given a limited budget of $15,000.
It appears that One Green Bean’s effort, which launched a few minutes ago, is first to market.
Tapping into Halloween, it will be called An Amercian Werewolf in Yaris. It will feature “Wolfy”, an actor in werewolf costume driving around Sydney in a Toyota Yaris offering lifts to people who have connected via Facebook and Twitter. They will also be able to follow him via GPS and flag him down if they want a lift.
The lifts will start tomorrow to get people to Halloween parties.
Meanwhile campaigns from Hothouse, Saatchi & Saatchi, Iris and a joint effort from Oddfellows and The Population will follow int he coming days.
October 30th, 2009 at 11:22 am
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Comments
30 Oct 09
11:33 am
Now this is cool.
30 Oct 09
11:49 am
Tim, it’s not actually an actor in a costume – it’s a werewolf. And he is American too.
30 Oct 09
12:06 pm
Uncool
30 Oct 09
12:11 pm
Pascal, if you ask Wolfy if he’s wearging Levis will he give you his pants?
Dave.
30 Oct 09
12:12 pm
oops – “wearing”
30 Oct 09
12:12 pm
In time, this type of activity might not seem ‘odd’ at all I would venture. Good on Toyota for shaking it up with this methodology.
Although it does feel like the conusmer is playing second-fiddle somewhat, it’s a pretty progressive way to unearth a winning agency based on some solid data… After all, there’s no shortage of social media efforts out there that have failed to make themselves a blip on the radar – so not much to lose for the brand by experimenting here, so long as they adhere to some fundamentals.
30 Oct 09
12:26 pm
I bet this gets more airtime as a PR piece than an actual social media play. Our industry will talk about it more than the punters will. How do people follow on GPS? Sounds like PR spiel as this feature isn’t available.
30 Oct 09
12:28 pm
Always love these small production campaigns. Great ideas in a hurry. I can only imagine the looks on some of these ‘top’ creative agencies having to pit their skills against unknowns at the same level. EgobashT hard
30 Oct 09
12:31 pm
Well played Toyota, convincing 5 agencies to go head to head can’t have been easy.
Is this your handy work Chris Parker?
30 Oct 09
12:33 pm
Really? Vampire’s are so hot right now that the thinking was to freshed it up with the new angle of a werewold??? Original. And the tie in with Halloween to close the loop on the idea? Sorry was this meant for the US?
Disppointing effort, really weak. How does this enhance consumers experience? It isn’t even egaging. Where is the google maps real time plug in? Hope for the sake of the pitch let alone consumers that this isn’t it.
30 Oct 09
12:36 pm
Hm, I’d say Saatchi & Saatchi’s was the first to come out actually – I saw its Toyota Yaris short film competition website yesterday: http://www.cleverfilmcomp.com.au/
30 Oct 09
12:44 pm
Just saw the Saatchi microsite. Getting a bunch of unpaid students to create your content for you?
That IS clever. Isn’t it?
30 Oct 09
12:45 pm
@Dave King you may have to try it out, you are in for a hairy ride in any case
@ those waiting for the GPS tracking, it will be available when Wolfy is taking the streets for the first time tomorrow
30 Oct 09
12:50 pm
Hahah you can’t beat a good pun. And american werewolf in Yaris…
30 Oct 09
12:59 pm
Wow the Saatchi’s one is bad. How did they manage to give away 10 grand in a total budget of 15 grand. 5 grand for all production, service and creative? Looks like Toyota were duped by the bait and lure.
30 Oct 09
1:09 pm
Love the saatchi idea – on such a small budget it is genius getting everyone else to do the work!!
30 Oct 09
1:24 pm
wonder how much these campaigns will crossover into the market known as ‘non media douchebags’.
i like it but i am a media douchebag … what would joe smith from pakenham think about it?
answer – they probably wouldn’t
30 Oct 09
1:28 pm
so no time or distance limits? i can’t find any guidelines or restrictions.
30 Oct 09
1:39 pm
Saatchi’s should be ashamed of that effort particularly with everyone watching this public pitch (which I’m loving thanks Toyota…).
30 Oct 09
1:40 pm
Five agencies. Five agendas. Five different messages. What’s the end customer supposed to think? They don’t understand that five different agencies are pitching for the business.
Would you go out with five different advertising messages at once Toyota…?
30 Oct 09
1:57 pm
Hey Earl, can you not add up?
The Saatchi campaign is giving away $7,000 + $3,000 +$1,000 = $11,000
30 Oct 09
1:59 pm
@Jame Duthie I doubt they are handing over the keys to the castle. They will still need to get ideas signed off I’m guessing to assure alignment. If that happens no problem, if it isn’t happneing then yes major problems.
30 Oct 09
2:08 pm
Wolfman wont reply to my tweet. Is it because its not full moon until Tuesday?
30 Oct 09
2:19 pm
@ Scott You are right, I can’t add up, we blue bloods aren’t the smartest people in the world. So that leaves only 4K for the entire campaign. Who knew Saatchi’s were so cheap.
30 Oct 09
2:45 pm
Who is Joe Smith from Pakenham?
30 Oct 09
2:53 pm
Excellent stuff actually. Now I might not exactly be in the market for a yaris, but i love the out of the box thinking.
30 Oct 09
2:54 pm
Hi my name is Joe and I live in Pakenham ….. I don’t get it
30 Oct 09
2:55 pm
Wouldn’t it be smarter for Toyota to actually listen to hear what customers are saying about their brands they want to use Social media for, rather than a blatant PR exercise. Social media isn’t just about telling people information through WOM / social networking / PR type media. It is also about listening to hear what customers are saying about the said brand. What would have been impressive, is that they focused on the reason why they should use social media, then developing the concept. A case of putting the horse in front of the cart. For all we know, customers might say that the Yaris is crap and the Corolla is the way forward
30 Oct 09
3:11 pm
seeing the ROI on these campaigns would be interesting.
generally auto marketers and especially dealers value selling cars quite highly and generally above blogcred … but things might have changed in this world of ours
30 Oct 09
3:20 pm
Great idea, but whats the long tail of the back of the green bean execution? After this weekend it’s dead… or rather, the suns risen.
30 Oct 09
3:37 pm
This is AWARD School thinking. Literally. http://www.dpdialogue.com.au/z.....o-far-meh/
30 Oct 09
5:39 pm
@paul, I couldn’t agree more.
The idea of pitching 5 agencies against each is other fine. In a public forum? Well that’s for the consumers to decide.
But the idea of researching, monitoring and devising a solid strategy seems to have been thrown out the window here. @paul, your “horse and cart” analaogy is great. The cart carries the tools (or flashy social media ideas) to execute the strategy, but the horse takes you to your destination.
However, there are a few more to come, so watch this space, we may eat our words
31 Oct 09
7:09 am
How does this interesting but ultimately trivial story muster 32 comments, yet the Fosters Boonie story none?
I’m confused.
31 Oct 09
7:34 am
Hats off to the agencies involved – It would be all too easy not participate and stand on the sidelines (or on mumbrella.com.au) and make commentary about a subject that we all know far too little about. The 2 ideas so far are pretty cool.
At least we’re not just looking at a bunch of half baked Facebook Apps which seems to be the common go to for digital agencies trying to be social!
31 Oct 09
10:08 am
Gee Matt. You sound like a sulky kid who didn’t get invited to the party. No wonder social media gets a bad wrap.
Surely you would actually need to read the brief and understand what was required before you pass and fail these campaigns in your blog.
Maybe if you spent more time doing some work rather than assessing other people’s you might actually get your ’social media’ agency included in the pitch. Or was it bease of this piece of work you or your girlfriend did that they decided against your agency?
http://www.coldrock.com.au/
1 Nov 09
8:05 pm
Wow, some split opinions here. George Best, it is weird and a tad confusing.
aplet, seems like it’s touched a nerve with you? Your comments are very directed, is there more to it? Perhaps you are involved with one of the competing agencies, or even Toyota. Care to divulge your identity and cut to the chase?
2 Nov 09
8:00 am
Well that ended up being a total dud.
2 Nov 09
4:21 pm
what does an of this have to do with a Yaris? I reckon it looks more like an ad for Movember than for Yaris! The Yaris brand is one of the few well defined car brands – atleast Saatchi’s cleverfilm idea, whilst not original, links to the brand’s clever car positioning.
3 Nov 09
10:02 am
Good to see Saatchi have correct grammar!
“Make a original film”
It’s make an original film dufuses
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