• by Karl Greenberg , December 11, 2015

Toyota's Scion division was, for years, all about guerrilla marketing, an urban car customizing focus, and showing up by surprise. Now, with (finally) new vehicles like the FR-S sports car, iA small car, the iM hatchback, a forthcoming and as-yet un-named subcompact, the company is reaching a broader audience with a brighter tone with its “Weird, Right?” campaign from AOR of eight months, Droga5. Marketing Daily catches up with Andrew Gilleland, new to the role of Scion VP.  

Q: Why is Droga5 The right agency for Scion today?

A: Droga understands millennial customers, who are a lot more pragmatic and realistic than consumers were a decade ago when we were still marketing to Gen-X. Attik [Scion’s former agency, and agency from the inception of the brand] was “darker,” which worked great for us at the time; they were the right agency then, but the consumer has changed; we have changed, and we wanted an agency that is changing with us, and that's how we ended up with Droga5.

Q: What is changing about media and creative strategy.

A: We are looking at upper funnel to get people interested in Scion, and then driving them further down the funnel through digital, where we can talk about products. That is different than in the past because we consider ourselves, while not entirely mainstream, a little more mainstream now then we were, partly because of the nature of the Gen Y consumer.

Q: This is a national media buy, as well. Isn't that unusual as well for Scion?

A: We have done it in the past, but it has been a while since we have. The timing was right with new products. And our sales volume has to go up, clearly. 

Q: Toyota has gotten more emotional, and its designs more aggressive. Has that changed the role of Scion? 

A: Scion is still really a laboratory for experimentation. The key thing is that 70% of the people who are buying Scion have never bought a Toyota product. So that, to me, is the most important number, more even than sales volume. What we are trying to do with Scion is bring people into the Toyota family, and then, as they change and get older, their needs are going to be different, at which point we have all these products [in the Toyota brand] that will fit their lifestyle then. The good thing is we aren't seeing them come back and buying Scion. They are going into Toyota, so that part of the model is working. But we need to get more of them, obviously. It is, at some level, about sales volume, so we are tying to balance being that laboratory for experimentation with bringing people to Toyota, with getting volume, since we are, after all, in business. 

Q: What are you doing to drive people to digital? 

A: We just launched a new web page, Scion 2.0. We had had a clunky experience with mobile, which is a platform that is really important, especially for retailers. So the first move was to optimize for mobile, and then make the web page central to where customers in the mid-funnel of the process go to research. We may put competitive vehicle sets up there in a robust way. We are also trying to do things like live chat. And, with that, we are working on a program in which a customer can ask for a web-page device takeover; a representative can browse for you, or co-browse, with two way chat. So it's that ability to be flexible in the process we are looking for. 

Q: Scion had never been a "performance" car brand, now it is with the FRS. How are you marketing that to a new audience for the brand? 

A: We went into the Formula Drift Championship this year. FRS has a small volume of 10,000 units per year, so we want to reach that sports car fan, that small audience. Formula Drift is a great way to talk to that customer without spending millions of dollars. We were doing drag racing when I was here 10 years ago, and we got out of that. Formula Drift was not as popular then as it it is today. Now CBS Sports is covering it, and it is part of the X-Games, so it is very different than several years ago, when it was a Japanese domestic market thing. It is more mainstream. 

Q: Toyota is heading to Texas from California. What is the cultural challenge for Scion with that move?

A: California is 25% of our business, so we get California car car culture, but when you live, hear, and “lens” through California, you think everyone is that kind of customer. The lifestyle and culture of L.A. is not the same as everyone else. But we will always have a connection to L.A. whether we are there physically or not. We are never going to forget that this is the biggest place for Toyota, Lexus and Scion.