Toyota continues celebrating middle age with new Hip To Be Square Camry ad
Toyota has rolled out another ad in its “Calling all the heroes” camapign which celebrates its middle classed, middle aged white demographic with the Huey Lewis and The news track Hip To Be Square.
The new ad – for the Camry Hybrid – switches the focus to the children being driven around by their dads.
The series of ads, by Saatchi & Saatchi, launched last month with a minute long version featuring the Camry, Camry Hybrid and Aurion. It was backed with ads focusing on the Aurion Presara and Camry Atara.
The strategy of unashamedly recognising that the target audience has settled down – labelled last week by news.com.au as “too hilarious and ironic for its own good” – was previously successfully employed by Innocean for the Kia Sportage in an ad featuring a middle aged man reliving past glories while shopping for nappies.
Thanks to the ad, Hip To Be Square is back in the music download charts, at number 39 in the rock downloads chart.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Funny ads, but the question does it translate to sales?
Making fun wanna be cool dads is in…. Camry x cardigan dads has always been the image, I think this demographic of young families are going the wagon/mini suv like the CX5, RAV4, Audi Q3, BMW X1s…..
Yes, dads need practical cars but also yes they want to be cool….Camry is not cool…
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The message I get out of this is “you’re already fucked, so just give up any hope of doing anything interesting (ever) and buy the flagship of bland and average: a Camry”
It actually depresses me.
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I thoroughly enjoyed this!
A very clear advertising message, great to see.
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this is what happens when an insight or research gets literally translated into execution
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