Toyota culls Saatchi & Saatchi from social media pitch
Toyota will delay announcing the winning agency of its Yaris social media pitch until the New Year, with Saatchi & Saatchi now officially out of the running following the controversy over the ‘Clean Getaways’ video.
The video, which featured a young man swapping innuendo-laden banter with a father about sleeping with his daughter was the winner of Saatchi & Saatchi’s Clever Film Competition – the agency’s submission to the social media the pitch.
It went up against Iris, One Green Bean, Hothouse and a joint effort from Oddfellows and The Population – though the latter has now closed and its staff have moved into fellow Photon agency C4.
A decision on the pitch was originally planned to be made before the end of the year, but Peter Webster, Toyota divisional manager of marketing, told Mumbrella that in light of public backlash against the video, it now plans to reveal the winning agency early in the New Year.
He added that Saatchi & Saatchi would not be awarded the account.
Saatchi & Saatchi wasn’t taken off the pitch [because of the backlash against the Clean Getaways video]. Toyota was in the process of making a decision when this thing broke. But let me say, they didn’t have the winning pitch even when it did break. So they weren’t disqualified because of that issue.”
Webster said it is currently discussing internally why the Clean Getaways video was allowed to go live. “We already have a rigorous process where we review content before it goes into the public domain. But that process was not undertaken and consequently the material went live on the website.”
The social media pitch was led by Todd Connolly, Toyota’s manager of direct marketing and social media. Webster would not go into detail about who else was involved in the process but said that “no heads roll at Toyota”.
On the Yaris debacle Webster said:
It was an error of judgement to put it there in the first place and we removed it quickly. We apologised to anyone who was offended by it. We’ve admitted our mistake and our guilt and learnt a valuable lesson from it. Now that’s where I’d like to let the matter end.
Social media is part of our life going forward and we’re going to continue to be involved. It’s always best to learn our lesson early in the process rather than further down the track.”
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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topics
Clean Getaways
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HotHouse
Iris
Oddfellows
One Green Bean
Saatchi & Saatchi
social media
The Population
Toyota
yaris
I don’t get it. If Saatchi’s weren’t removed because of Clean Getaways (according to Webster), why were they removed?
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Scott – perhaps because the idea of a user-generated ad competition wasn’t the most creative or effective use of social media?
Personally I think it’s a shame that this will be interpreted as Toyota wanting to distance itself from ‘Clean Getaways’. I see the problem being that we’ve just seen too many of these ad-making competitions.
For me, successful social media campaigns offer a fun, original idea that people want to participate in and tell people about, rather than just leaning on users to come up with the creative.
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Mel – I don’t buy that. If that were the case, then they would simply not have won the pitch. As it stands, they’ve been singled out for special treatment and removed from the pitch prior to the winner being announced.
Webster says it wasn’t due to the CG backlash, so why was it?
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they were all average – the ‘winner’ iwill ultimately be the best ‘loser’ …
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Was I imagining things or did I see the star of said clever film on the TV the other day – singing and dancing on a kid’s program?
Needless to say the innuendo was less.
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Yes, it was a pretty lame idea in the first place. It seems “get the people to do an ad” type competitions is the only thing big, traditional agencies can think of when it comes to social media. Anyway, I for one am glad to read the statements from Toyota. They’re a big company and things will always go wrong, especially in a new arena they have no experience with. It’s good to hear them say “yes, we screwed up, sorry, lesson learned”. They should’ve done that a week ago, but still.
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Good luck to the eventual winner – winning that blockbuster $15k account will be one for the B&T Awards next year I’m sure.
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I don’t think running a pitch in public is a good idea, whatever the medium. Not good for the brand if it puts work in the public domain that goes awry, and not good for the agencies that take part.
It suggests a client that doesn’t know what they are looking for.
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Andrew – you weren’t imagining things. The actor’s name is Liam Nunan, the kids’ show is Puzzle Play and apparently he’s also openly gay.
Chris – I agree that a live pitch isn’t a good idea, but for me it’s because it squanders the goodwill of social media users on ideas that the client may not even end up going with.
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After the previous debacle Todd Connolly, Toyota’s manager of direct marketing and social media, still has a job???
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Agree ‘anothermous’, how Todd Connolly has still got a job is beyond me.
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we had a laugh about running this pitch if we were to use traditional platforms.
lets get 5 agencies that have never really made a TVC before.. make 10 secs of a potential 60 sec TVC, no real guidelines on brand or creative, no strategy, no long term thinking, no brand crisis management, just whatever your team can come up with. No approval process…(which is unheard of) we will then run all the 5 TVCs during a 4 week period, just randomly with no thought, just anywhere, and see which one wins.
No research, No Media Analysis, No psychographics, no placement analysis, No focus groups…No proof…no justification on spend of dollar, no 200 page strategy document begging for the idea to get through the multiple key stakeholders…. etc etc… nothing… just throw all caution to the wind….
The one that wins… we will finish the the rest of the commercial.
i mean… really..
The coolest thing an agency could have done was to tell Toyota your pitch idea is lame, and we are not going to risk our reputation in social media on a half assed attempt of you “dipping your toe” into the space without thinking about it. $15k is not enough danger money.
If you were a potential social media client, i would be walking very fast away from these contenders on the outcomes of this experiment.
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