• by Karl Greenberg , April 12, 2010

With the U.S. auto market this year buzzing around hybrid cars, micro-mini vehicles, crossovers, and compacts, large cars are a bit like Ferdinand the bull. Ferdinand, as schoolchildren everywhere know, prefers sitting under his favorite cork tree smelling flowers to bullfighting.

Toyota's new campaign for its Avalon sedan, with its retro theme hearkening back to a time when full-sized cars were the U.S. auto market, might be seen almost as whimsical.

The effort -- via Toyota's long-time AOR, LA-based Saatchi & Saatchi -- uses fonts, voices, styles and sets reminiscent of the time when Frank Sinatra's "Come Fly With Me" was atop the charts. The campaign, "Comfort is Back. Travel Avalon Class," even features '50s- and '60s-era pamphlet art to tout Avalon's cabin size, ride and today's technology.

Following in the wake of the popularity of "Mad Men," the TV ads -- set to songs like "Mr. Sandman" -- evoke early TV and radio ads, and an era when only the elite traveled by plane and trains had first-class cabins.

Bob Zeinstra, Toyota's national advertising and strategic planning manager, says the company hopes the retro feel will lift awareness of a vehicle that has largely been in the shadows and position it in the newly invigorated premium segment of the market above mass-market and below luxury brands.

"We needed to boost Avalon's upper-funnel awareness. Not a lot of people know it's a model we sell, so we needed something to break through -- something different. The second thing that drove that was the target market for us, the 'cuspers,' the youngest of the boomer set; and so we wanted to do something that would relate to them and their experiences.

"The third objective, and the biggest driver for the type of creative we chose for this is the fact that for us, Avalon has to be a cut above -- really almost separate from -- the rest of the lineup. We can't have anyone mistake the significance of the vehicle, the 'premium-ness' of the vehicle."

He says that while the premium region of the market had fallen along with the rest of the auto business, things are actually not as bad as they have been because consumers in luxury are looking again below luxury, thanks to new activity in the segment with vehicles like Ford Taurus and Hyundai Genesis.

"There was a time in mid- to late-2009 when this segment was reducing in size even faster than the overall market, but it has corrected somewhat because there are people currently in the near-lux segment moving down and people who generally had been in the standard mid-segment who aren't skipping premium cars and heading right into near-luxury."

The two TV spots premiere April 12 on network and cable, plus program integrations and sponsorships of shows like the History Channel's "This Day in History," A&E's "Kings of Late Night," USA's "Royal Pains," Travel Channel's "Samantha Brown's Great Weekends," TNT's "The Closer," Discovery's "How Stuff Works" and The Weather Channel's "Wake Up with Al."

Broadcast support will also align with sports programming, including Major League Baseball, NHL and Derby horse racing.

The effort includes sponsorship of iPad applications like The Weather Channel and Time, and www.toyota.com/avalonclass, whose visual conceit is a Broadway stage and whose host is a perfectly coiffed, tuxedo-wearing, tap-dancing swain who leads virtual tours of different cities (like "The Big Easy") with each city chosen to highlight specific vehicle features.

There is also Avalon-sponsored "Who Knew?," a 90-second daily news segment on Yahoo News at whoknew.news.yahoo.com, that recounts the day's top entertainment and lifestyle news from Monday through Friday.

Toyota will also promote the car via sponsorship of Smithsonian Museum Day on Sept. 25, a national free-admission day at some 1,200 museums across the country. Toyota will cross-promote with interactive, print, broadcast and on-site activation in major markets. And it will run ride and drive programs for the car.

There is also a program with Expedia, promoting an online weekend getaway for trip planning, partnerships with Weather.com and casual gaming site Pogo and a creative Yahoo home page takeover on April 14.

There will also be a newspaper ad push, including an Avalon-themed crossword puzzle insertion on April 20, and magazine ad support starting in April weeklies and May monthlies in titles like National Geographic, Golf Digest, Golf Magazine, Time and O the Oprah Magazine.