Part of Toyota’s marketing roster around the NFL is fantasy NFL. The automaker, which recently announced it would advertise in the Super Bowl next year, is also running the latest iteration of
its relationship with Yahoo Sports, focused on Yahoo Fantasy Football, and aligned with the new NFL season.
Toyota is taking the relationship offline as well, via title branding of
a fantasy football-player “Toyota Hall of Fame.” The hall of fame is part of Yahoo Game Day at San Francisco’s new Levi’s Stadium, a first-ever brick-and-mortar expression of
Yahoo’s fantasy football program.
Dionne Colvin-Lovely, national director, traditional and emerging media, Toyota Motor Sales USA, tells Marketing Daily that the automaker's
integration with Yahoo Fantasy Football is about native advertising with an eye to reaching mobile-device players.
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"Half the placements are mobile native ads, since the player spends about
half the time in game on mobile devices," she says. And the mobile elements we have are about improving the experience," she says. "We try to make sure the presence is relevant to what the player
experience is. So if you are sending signals in the game that you are interested in new information about players, we have brand presence around the research and a way to serve up that information. So
it's very native and organic, and less disruptive."
Saatchi & Saatchi LA, Toyota’s agency of record, was instrumental in developing the program.
The partnership allows
Toyota to identify users who have shopped on Yahoo Autos and therefore offer them lower-funnel messages, she says. "That way we are not necessarily coming in with a hard-sell and barraging players,
but trying to find ways organically for messages to align with the tools for playing," she adds.
The message mix is both brand-level awareness activity and model specific content around game
perks.
"So, if you want to award a fellow teammate for performance, you are able to send them a trophy that are aligned with Toyota models, trophies that reflect the essence of the vehicles:
so the endurance award [spotlights] the Tundra [pickup truck]," she says.
Another one is "Camry Best in Class," for "being the best-drafting team in your league." The awards direct winners to
post to their Facebook or Twitter accounts.
Toyota has been part of the fantasy football initiative with Yahoo for eight years -- partly, says Colvin-Lovely, because of the platform's
reach, with over six million registrants.
In real football, although Toyota is not an official NFL sponsor, it has a huge presence with Sunday Night Football on NBC, both online and on
air.
"We have custom units, and we own the half-time show," she says. She points out that Toyota is also strong in other NFL games during the week, including the popular Thursday night game,
and also had a big activation over Thanksgiving.
As for staking a claim in the upcoming Super Bowl, Toyota will start digital activities around that in January.
"The online
element of that becomes a significant opportunity after the first," she says.