The Yaris social media chase – One Green Bean and The Population take early lead with Hothouse catching fast; Saatchi & Saatchi in neutral, Iris non-starter

cars sold? test drives booked? brochures downloaded? traffic to yaris site?

Larry, whose to say any of those thing syou list are on the brief the agencies are being aksed to answer… It would be interesting to know more about what the brief is actually.

I want to know the result like @Larry. I mean just how effective are these campaigns? Bringing on-line to almost a guerilla style marketing strategy..

A tad early to say, I reckon, Larry.

However, I strongly suspect that a video that went up 12 hours ago won’t have sold any cars yet.

It’s of course possible that as a result of seeing the Lego animation last night, somebody was motivated to be standing outside their dealership at 9am today. Allowing for a bit of haggling time, they may even have been on the road for half an hour or so by now.

But I suspect it’ll take a fraction longer.

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

Larry – it’s all about “engagement” not sales. Heh.

Tim – I think you should also include the Twitter followers for the Werewolf in Yaris campaign, currently 214. Also the number of lifts the actor has given to people, as that is an important metric to consider for this specific idea/campaign.

I think Werewolf in Yaris should prevail – piggybacking off a popular YouTuber and giving away a car is a good ploy, but ultimately the level of experience and engagement with the actual product is limited. Scheduling a party on the same night as MC Hammer giving a social media talk demonstrates S&S just don’t get it. Playing up a Sydney/Melbourne rivalry is a good hook, but the correlation between that and the Yaris isn’t immediately apparent to me.

Wolfie delivers the goods in terms of being a digital/social campaign that crosses effortlessly into the real world, puts the product centre stage and also provides a useful ‘real world’ service – taxi-ing drunk revellers round Sydney at Melbourne cup time. Whether the werewolf costume is necessary for the idea to work – I’m unconvinced. It gives you a catchy play on words, but little else.

I think the bigger question is why are toyota making a pitch a public event? Did the agencies need approval on their ideas before taking to market? What’s the thinking in terms of making your communications so scattergun and disjointed. Is Toyota taking a laissez-faire approach to social media simply because it’s cheaper than TVC’s, and therefore shouldn’t need as much due dilligence? Or is this an interesting manifestation of the how social media challenges brands to take risks, try new things and get outside comfort zones?

Ta for flagging up the Twitter followers for Wolfy, Clinton. Now added.

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

True Mike – maybe the brief doesn’t involve selling cars or raising consumer interest in the car.

Yes Tim I realise that putting a video up 12 hours ago probably isn’t going to sell a car today … but one would assume auto makers when they invest in marketing activities would like to sell vehicles as a result.

I’m not sure they make their money from ‘engaging consumers’ and running home movie contests and hip taxi services but maybe they do, who knows.

I know I am in industry so am not a normal punter & shouldn’t use a sample of one but…I don’t watch TV & find the car ads the most boring of all the ads. I am going to buy a car in the next year. I have learned more car and brand options from being exposed to their social media campaigns than I ever have and it has been quite fun – due to MicraCity I know that is a Nissan car I could consider, the Yaris is also in my consideration set, Mazda tweet about what is going on. So yeah based on some of these campaigns they will get a sale out of me…

re metrics … curious to know how twitter followers and facebook fans is an indication of anything aside someone clicking a button. It feels eerily like the 2009 version of a myspace brand page where people aligned success to the amount of friends the page had … not what impact it caused or the amount of activity around it.

i know we can measure things like friends and followers but what does it really mean? understand the budgets are limited and most of us don’t know what the brief entails … but would really like to know from any social/media expert on here what these agencies are trying to achieve beyond PR for their own services?

Sounds like this is a popularity contest – which facebook, youtube, twitter page can generate the most views. Boring boring boring. How many of the views are driven by people who work in agencies vs the general population – to hazard a guess – 95% would be from agencies.

There is no true innovation shown by any of the agencies, other than my stunt is better than yours.

The volumes of interaction with people on all campaigns seems to be very very small; 150 Facebook fans, 16 guests for a launch party, 2047 youtube views etc.
I have not seen the brief so am not qualified to make assumptions on what the objectives for these activities were / are. But I think it is reasonable to suggest that a desire to create a buzz and get people involved must have been part of it.
It would seem that to date none of these ideas has managed to do that in any real way. These numbers are very small.
Perhaps the numbers would be much larger, and the subsequent buzz greater if Toyota and the agencies had been a little smarter and actually tasked themselves with connecting each of these activities in some way rather than keep them isolated from each other. Not just better from a consistency POV for the consumer but also a way to try and really etll a story.
Personally I think if we could have had 5 separate agencies collaborating to join these campaigns together in some fashion that really would have been impressive.

Hothouse fail. Saatchi’s should be embarrassed.
Green beans and population leading the charge though still a little disappointing…
Mind you easy to critique when you’re on the sidelines!

Population idea seems good and could evolve through stages, which is something that hasn’t been touched on in the PR/editorial noise so far. Not so sure about the other ones and how they could extend beyond a quirky tactical idea.

hothouse – getting blunty to give something away? 1/10 for originality there. been done and done, and done again. and now again. surely there’s other minor celebs on youtube who will sell out to a corporate with a couple of $20 notes.

On the subject, woops Telstra: http://www.smh.com.au/technolo.....-i13d.html

how many of these fans/followers etc are punters as opposed to those in the industry? or have toyota decided that social media types are the ultimate untapped yaris market and this is the most targeted campaign ever?

Larry – Again, engagement, not sales.

Over the next 18 months some of the people who have received a lift will be considering a purchase. All of them will have been bombarded with TVC’s, outdoor etc – very few will have already been for a joy ride in the car, with an actor in wolf costume – pretty good way to differentiate your brand in a crowded market, wouldn’t you agree?

clinton – all valid points … but doesn’t that require the public to be aware of the initiative. i think from the ‘metrics’ provided we can safely say the public have no idea about the werewolf idea and it hasn’t really engaged anyone aside a few marketing ppl.

how many people actually got a lift and took part? of those 10-20 people (at a guess) how many are in the market to buy a car? of those, how has their perception of the yaris changed? do you really think getting a lift with a dude in a werewolf costume will make you think differently about the cars features and value? is there a connection? what motivates this market to consider a yaris over a fiesta over a mazda 3? does the campaign tap into these triggers?

question has to be asked – would this be the best way to invest $15k to ultimately sell a car? i guess toyota and its dealers are going to be asking that question. Engagement as a buzzword might be tolerated by the digital community but not sure whether auto marketers and the dealers that sell their vehicles will be content with engagement as a measure of success.

Larry – Engagement is definitely a buzz word and I cringe using it, but I think that this is purely what the campaign is doing, on a very small scale.

I guess it’s worth noting this is actually a quirky way to run a pitch, and whilst I’m not convinced of the wisdom of running a pitch this way, the opinion I offer is within the bounds of the exercise – 5 agencies demonstrating their skills with a small budget and a small brief. I think Wolfie is the front-runner, so far.

15k wouldn’t produce many brochures. It wouldn’t buy much TV or radio airtime. But I think this process has produced some interesting small scale experiments in the much hyped social media space.

My thoughts move forward to what could be achieved with the full spend – 5 agencies x 15k – what would happen if all 75k were spent on one of these campaigns.

Maybe Hothouse should enter their video into Saatchi’s film competition. With enough promotion it’ll make the shortlist.

@Mike Raphone,

I can tell you, they would’ve ALL been there as “why are we doing this” questions.

@Clinton.

It’s about both. No body will care how engaged everyone is if not one of them buys a car. It should, because purchase intent should (and be a desired outcome) beget engagement and so on. That’s the commercial reality of it. The results will be measured across a whole range of metrics, but I’ll bet my pants related sales is one of them.

Why a public event pitch? Pay the people who tick the most boxes (and how thick the ticks are). Strategy, execution and results all rolled into one. Social media’s so diverse, it makes a pretty good place in which this kind of idea can fly.

Makes sense to me.

With level of fans / followers at this stage, I think it’s safe to say it’s very early days. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for these agencies to deliver significant following and engagement. Should help other marketer’s to understand that these things don’t just happen overnight…

A can’t believe no one did Last Tango in Yaris – get a couple of Brando & Schneider lookalikes to bonk on the backseat. Sold.

I may be missing something here, but how are Hothouse able to give away a Yaris within a $15k budget? A new base-model Yaris is $16k.

If they’re prepared to not only give their time for free, but also lose money on the prize, they should win for sheer determination 🙂

I’d agree with CG that it is easy to critique when you are sitting on the sidelines, so I’m careful of my comments here.

That said, these are all currently PR campaigns using a couple of social media tools, not social media campaigns. The Werewolf idea is nice ambush PR but the fact that it is using Twitter and Facebook doesn’t really make it a social media campaign…in fact it isn’t really a campaign because it is only a few days long!

Not sure about the S+S one but I quite like the idea of the others – the thing that worries me more here is that basic PR is what this is, not social media – I’d really like to see less of the ‘social media campaign’ terminology for things that are clearly not (using Twitter does not make ye social media!!!).

Building engagement and conversation is what social media is all about – I’m not seeing that here.

That said, again it is easy to throw stones in glass houses 🙂

1. Thoughts? The Yaris social media chase is showing more true traction in regards to “Social Media” and conversation happening right here @mumbrella (21 comments already – they have blown the others out of the water!) than the actual agencies doing the pitches! Love to know how many people have clicked through on this article? and then went on to check out the campaigns!

2. The client might be allocated the account win using the tactic of an “agency competition” tactic rather than the actual agencies campaigns! It has certainly generated interest in the product and the campaigns. The ROI well who knows only a few days in.

3. I am also guessing with the few days lead in, especially over a public holiday and spring racing carnival in Melbourne, that most of the views and the friends and followers are in house and friends of the Agencies!

4. The only thing that will save Saatchi and Saatchi is to get MC Hammer to arrive in a Yaris at the Launch party with the rest of the social media crew and maybe do a mass live tweet and a live ustream red carpet arrival and give away a car via facebook!

But hey go you good things! Looking forward to tracking the results…

Oh and the Social Media club is industry, MC Hammer’s chat is industry – social media is more than the ‘Social Media community’ who are going to those events (disclosure, yes I am one of them!).

So as far as that goes, not going to take S+S apart for suggesting that there might be more people out there interested in social media than us hacks!!!

Most of the ideas are pretty lame. The only one that seems to have any real merit is the Blunty one, which is in effect piggybacking off a famous YouTuber as someone said. The werewolf one is just dumb in my opinion.

What I don’t get is that if each agency were given $15k to do this, and a Yaris is around $15k, did Hothouse and Blunty not make any money off this?

Hi Tim O, I wonder if Yaris gave them a good price? I suspect they would ahve done…

And Jim, Isn’t “in effect piggybacking of a famous YouTuber” good PR practice?

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

“Iris

Iris declined to discuss its plans with Mumbrella, although nothing has yet launched”

IRIS PR Fail!

Iris not being very social….
Agree with Under Zealous #fail

Nissan’s contextual ads on YouTube don’t help HotHouse’s cause.

Sorry just noted I am going through a Singapore proxy today …… Contextual ads irrelevant. My Bad !

agree with cg, Hothouse has definitely failed at this stage.

Hothouse have only received some video views, One Green Bag & Population/Odd fellows have built social databases that can be leveraged moving forward.

If Hothouse continue to get 1000s of views per day for a few weeks, then it’ll be closer to being on par.

All that considered, none of us know what the campaign objectives were specifically. I’m guessing it was partially for Toyota to learn from the space and be better informed moving forward, they probably also measure this kind of debate and other media stories as a positive outcome.

The Population’s melbourne/sydney rivalry idea is a bust as no one in Sydney cares about Melbourne’s perceived rivalry with us.

If ‘social media engagement’ is their main metric ie ppl joining groups etc why not give away one car randomly to anybody who joins ‘The Yaris Group’ on facebook. That group will get thousands.

To be honest, I’m not really impressed with any of the ideas.

My sister owns a Yaris and to me the one thing that differentiates the car is just how sexy and small it is.

I don’t see how any of the ideas really show why you should buy the Yaris…

If I had $15k – i would have aligned the Yaris with the Melbourne Cup Carnival and done a tongue in cheek viral around the world of sexy and small jockeys….as they are fast, elegant and small….

How can Hothouse give away a car worth more than 15 grand with a 15 grand budget?

Maybe they should have included Razor on the list. Surely their flashmob has garnered more attention than any of these efforts.

Because the Five Dock dealer gave them a discount on a new vehicle.

Maybe so Terry T, but it would have had to have been a hell of a discount. Smells fishy.

IMHO these campaigns are not social enough, they’re either viral video’s or competitions, but there’s not enough of a social hook to engage the audience properly.

What about something like…

#yaris #movember Twitter social media campaign

For every RT of #yaris #movember on Twitter during the month of November, we’ll donate $1 to the Movember charity campaign (www.movember.com) and give away a custom painted Movember Yaris to one lucky ReTweeter.

I’ve just updated the figures. The crossed through numbers were as of 10am today, the updated number 5.45pm.

At least today, the Hothouse/ Blunty numbers have seen the biggest jump, followed by the Population’s Melbourne vs Sydney debate.

Cheers,

Tim

The so called social media industry is quite extraordinary. Every forum for social media is full of anonymous misinformed debate from people who don’t understand the brief, the product category or even social media. Why is it that a mean spirited bunch is attracted to this part of the industry.

Some erudite commentator compares the Flip video thing with a car campaign – just so it’s clear the entire car market is around 1 million units. Yaris is a small % of that. There would be millions of video cameras sold a year so of course the numbers are different.

It seems that any social media activity that the commentators did not do is a bad idea. It smacks of jealousy.

As far as I can tell most of these have been running for just over 24 hours but the experts are declaring success or failure.

As engagement goes what a load of nonsense. Brand engagement is something you claim when you can’t account for a sale. It’s the way marketers account for the 50% or their advertising they know is wasted.

Judging from the debate this video is pretty close to the mark.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKCdexz5RQ8

Go Wolfy!!!

When I was head of digital at Zing we went in and meet the marketing team at Toyota as they were keen to explore social media. We didn’t get the go ahead but one of the things that they mentioned to us that the sale cycle for them was 5 years!

I found this a fascinating challenge, how to keep a brand top of mind and retain attention for 5 years. I have to say none of these executions demonstrate they can do that, however the FB pages are the most likely candidates as they can have tactics rolled out over time and build followers.

On another note not having a dig at anyone’s ones campaign, Scott Rhodie is a good mate and doing an awesome job at Hot House I was merely commenting on the 5 year sales cycle.

Cheers,

Geoffrey

Can someone explain to me the direct relationship between annual units sold in a category and the attention given to a social media activation. Of course more people watched the flip video, that’s because more video cameras are sold! WTF…

“Some erudite commentator compares the Flip video thing with a car campaign – just so it’s clear the entire car market is around 1 million units. Yaris is a small % of that. There would be millions of video cameras sold a year so of course the numbers are different.”

I love the lego vid 🙂 – there is a missed chance (or a possible evolution of campaign) in that one of Yaris’ best features is that it is small…..easy to park, zips around and all that….much like a little Lego car! Hothouse can use the ‘little’ theme throughout their campaign, which is perhaps a little unconciously intuitive, having put the two together already?

A link to the campaigns on car buy sites would be a great segue into relevancy, should any SM campaign feel they’d like to have their hard work equate to sales.

Werewolf in Yaris? ugh. sorry guys…. word plays are tack tack tack. I would be equally unimpressed if you chose, say, ‘Rock and co-Roll-a’ or ‘ ‘The Avensis of Priscilla – Queen of the City’, or ‘A nightmare on George St ft. Freddy Kluger’…..you get my point.

Hmmm this looks like a client and agency conversation to me.
Where does the potential Yaris buyer fit in!

Social media is soooo successful. I want in!

A good metric – how many followers are not associated with the industry?

There’s already plenty of great content/conversations happening about the Yaris. Just need to find a way to bring attention to it. Listen, Talk, Energise, Embrace. Here was our little effort http://www.toyotayarisisyournewbicycle.com

what about iris?

Hi legend,

Iris haven’t shared yet, although there’s something in the works that may be theirs. All tip-offs welcome!

Cheers,

Tim

cracks me up to read ungraduate indignation about confusion between PR and social media. when will you marketing newbies get it – use of social media is a basic consumer PR activity.

I would aligned the whole campaign to test drives of the Yaris.

The trouble with most social media ‘campaigns’ is they don’t get it – it’s still all about SELLING! Doh.

I would have aligned the campaign to test drives of the Yaris.

The trouble with most social media ‘campaigns’ is they don’t get it – it’s still all about SELLING! Doh.

Can we go back to basics – where is the ”big idea” in any of these campaigns. OK so it’s not that there aren’t any, it’s just that there not energising or engaging. Would you be proud to put any of these out there? Stand in front of your piers or friends and say this is pot notch marketing?
Couple of points to add:
1) Will people stop giving cars away. Yes they generate great numbers of people, but hey as mentioned before what’s that got to do with selling a car. I’m never going to buy a Yaris in my life, but I’ll have a free one if I can get one. Maybe some qualification required?
2) On this engagement point – so you engaged me, still not the right audience, even if you propose on one knee.
3) Carl Panczak – perfect sense: ”IMHO these campaigns are not social enough, they’re either viral video’s or competitions, but there’s not enough of a social hook to engage the audience properly.”
4) Simon Julian, on the money mate – ”Building engagement and conversation is what social media is all about – I’m not seeing that here”
5) What next for these campaigns outside their chosen environment, social media enables discussion, debate and dissemination of information, comes back to the ideas being strong enough. There is also the lack of integration with any other comms channels, however all of the above is not really the issue I think here, this is:
7) Budget, Toyota need to grow up. Yes this is a pitch, but do they really think that any of these where done for $15k. Get them to the marketing funny farm, because they’re clearly having the last laugh by getting masses of free agency time. The clear lack of respect for agencies worth is just not there.
The point – I think all have done the best they can with what they’ve got, Toyota should ashamed and grow up and develop a proper, respectful pitch process. Pathetic.

I had a ride with the Wolfman. No discussion around the Yaris whatsover. Mainly the agency shotgun talking to friends on his mobile phone and telling me about his other campaigns….

Look how’s turned up on the Aquabump e-newsletter today? http://www.aquabumps.com/2009/.....olf-yaris/