Toyota Yaris social media pitch – the final metrics
The Yaris social media live pitch has closed, with the Toyota marketing team due to start deliberating over the results at the beginning of next week.
Five agencies were each given a budget of $15,000 each to show what they can do for the Yaris. Those on the shortlist were One Green Bean, Hothouse, Saatchi & Saatchi, Iris and a joint effort from Oddfellows and The Population.
Todd Connolly, Toyota’s manager of digital media and marketing, told Mumbrella: “The experience has given us some learnings about the agencies which play in this space and it’s generally been positive. We’ll review via market research how the Yaris brand has been received, but that will take a bit longer. Anecdotally, we’ve had some positive responses.
“Some agencies have done a few things in the last few days that have been unexpected and we’ll be reviewing the results early next week,” he said.
In a video posted on YouTube yesterday by One Green Bean, the character “Wolfy” is seen putting what appears to be a dead body in his car after finding it on the street. When he opens the boot to check on it, the “Chk Chk Boom” girl Clare Werbeloff pops out.
The final tally of the social media coverage each campaign attracted is below:
Hothouse
The agency worked with its recently launched PR arm House Party, headed by Scott Rhodie (declaration of interest: Rhodie co-presents the Mumbrella Podcast) and YouTube blogger Blunty (Nate Burr). The campaign involved a competition to give away a Yaris. To set it up, Blunty created a stop motion animation featuring Lego bank robbers who use the car as a getaway vehicle.
This has been featured on Blunty’s YouTube channel and it is believed to be the first time a car has been given away on the video-sharing site.
* Metrics: Launched – November 5; YouTube views – 32, 479; YouTube ratings – 324; YouTube comments – 1, 284
One Green Bean
The agency’s An American Werewolf in Yaris campaign was launched just before Halloween. It created a character called “Wolfy”, an actor in Werewolf costume and makeup who gives lifts to party-goers across the city (declaration of interest: that’s included the Mumbrella team).
* Metrics: Launched – October 30; Facebook fans – 1,054; Twitter followers – 415; YouTube views of yesterday’s new video – 307; YouTube ratings – 20; YouTube comments – 8
The Population/ Oddfellows
The Population-led campaign is based around the rivalries between Sydney and Melbourne, with the strategy built around creating separate Facebook fan pages for the two citites. the campaign positioning Yaris as “The Ultimate City Car”.
* Launched – November 3 ; the Sydney Yaris Facebook page has 5,393 fans; the Melbourne page has 6,102 fans;
Saatchi & Saatchi
The agency invited the public to make an ad with its Clever Film Competition, with a first prize of $7000. There is also a Twitter profile and Facebook group. There were 35 entries in total, however, one of those was by One Green Bean for its own An American Werewolf in Yaris campaign. Also, there were three videos that appeared to be duplicate entries already on the list. However, they were marked as “This Video is Private”.
* Metrics: Launched – October 26; Entries uploaded on YouTube – 35, YouTube views – difficult to say as most of the views on the channel come from previously made Saatchi & Saatchi ads which have been placed among the entries; YouTube ratings – 681, YouTube votes – 2, 035; Twitter followers 53; Facebook group members 161
Iris
Iris launched three clips on YouTube as part of its “Bootboxing” campaign. They featured a team of people and hip hop artist Snob Scrilla making sound effects using the Yaris. The agency said its strategy was to leverage Toyota’s on-going music associations.
Metrics: Launched November 4; YouTube views for “Bootboxing feat. Snob Scrilla” – 5,801, YouTube ratings – 56, YouTube comments – 38; YouTube views for “Yaris Bootboxing feat. Snob Scrilla” – 2, 537 YouTube ratings – 13, YouTube comments – 4; YouTube views for “The Making of Bootboxing” – 545, YouTube ratings – 15
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
HotHouse
Iris
Oddfellows
One Green Bean
Saatchi & Saatchi
social media
The Population
Todd Connolly
Toyota
yaris
Saatchis really phoned this one in..
How goods GreenBean for submitting the Wolfy video to Saatchi’s comp. haha smashT
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Q did Hot House have the same brief – how can giving away a Yaris come in under the $15K budget?
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good q reevesy … especially seeing the T&C’s state the purchase price of the vehicle is $23,990 …
btw does that blunt dude actually do any videos that aren’t promo’s or ads in disguise? the whole thing is just full of bad ads. ice age, toshiba, yaris, samsung, wolverine.
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I agree Reevesy, says less about the campaign itself and more about the giveaway. Remove the giveaway and who cares about another Legoman stopmotion vid on Youtube??
The main problem for me is that, having just got back from a month overseas and being out of the industry loop a little, I saw two of the vids (with my consumer hat on) and wondered why the heck Toyota had two completely separate campaigns running at the same time. From a consumer perspective, that’s just confusing!
By the way, I literally laughed out loud at the One Green Bean submission of their own vid to Saatchi & Saatchi’s comp. Hilarious.
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I think OGB’s got it in the bag. Nice mix of experiencial and social media, interesting theming and storytelling that works well in an online and offline PR context. Plus, I saw it quite a bit across the web right through the campaign period. Good work guys! Go Wolfy! 😀
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OGB effort wasn’t all that – def not in the bag. Felt like a Hollywood movie that’s had different writers thrown at it at different stages, trying to save the day. I live in Sydney and am in the Yaris target market, but without a shadow of a doubt, unless it was for the ad industry coverage I see when at work, the whole Wolfie thing – and most of the other agencies’ work – would have passed me by entirely.
Again, from that perspective, the only two that registered on my radar were the Blunty clip (maybe the Yaris they’re giving away is second-hand and less than $15k?!) and the Oddfellows / Population campaign via facebook ads.
As for Saatchi & Saatchi. Very generous of the marketer to let them (a rostered agency) run with that idea… personally I felt it was the weakest of the bunch.
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Can we please get real and call the $15k a pitch fee and NOT a ‘budget’. If the winning agency were bench-marked on this sort of budgeting, they would not make a cent!
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Surprised how low the reach and engagement figures are for them all (ignoring Blunty’s existing following).
Going to avoid critiquing each agencies valiant efforts as the above comments tend to sum up my own thoughts.
Instead, I’ll offer a link to a VW campaign that I felt did a great job of building awareness, engagement and community.
VW Hand On Challenge – http://bit.ly/5TGQ58
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Wolfy offering people lifts in Sydney reminds me of the MINI Pick-Up campaign, loved the execution. http://bit.ly/8vscb5
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Go WOLFY!
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