• by Karl Greenberg , August 12, 2008

Toyota has launched a new TV, print and online campaign that promotes the brand as the future of green, safe and humane mobility. The effort, via the Japanese auto giant's global agency, Dentsu, broke on weekend news programs as a 60-second ad. New York-based Dentsu America, which pitched against five other Toyota agencies, won the project in November.

The ad shows a series of human tableaux--demonstrating Toyota's plug-in hybrid drivetrain and accident warning system that will show up in vehicles within the next five years--only at the very end of the spot.

The spot shows a young soccer player missing and then making a shot; a man ignoring his daughter to text on his cell, then putting the cell phone away to pay attention to her; and a rock star acknowledging screaming fans, then giving her backup musicians the chance to bow, while a voiceover says: "Be less discouraged, more determined, less distracted, more present, less me, more we. We ask a lot of ourselves--shouldn't we ask as much for our cars? At Toyota we are creating future technologies that minimize the negative, maximize the positive and humanize mobility."

Valerie Heine, EVP and group account director at the agency, says that the ads are running solely in the U.S.--at least so far, although chief creative officer Mike Wilson concedes that the ads, which are image-heavy and rely on voiceover for narrative, can be tailored to any market. "The hard thing is how do you make something that can run anywhere in the world--that makes cultural and visual sense? The work has to be something that can be adapted using different languages and voices."

A Toyota executive conceded that the ads will run in global markets later this year.

The new ad is not the first Toyota spot from Dentsu America. The agency, which took over Toyota's corporate ad chores when it acquired Oasis in 2004, also created the company's first Toyota corporate TV spot for the U.S. market last year. The ad pitched Toyota as a green company via time-lapse video of people in the wilderness building a sculpture of a Toyota car from leaves and branches, and the car, abandoned, returning to the soil.

Aaron Frisch, creative director at Dentsu on the account, says the agency's efforts are intended to show that Toyota applies its vehicle production philosophy of Kaizen, (Japanese, roughly translated, for "continuous improvement") to its corporate philosophy and technological advances. "Our challenge," says Frisch, "was to create a spot we knew needed to focus on future technology but also fit it creatively with the message of continual improvement."

Ean Shearer, VP and associate media director at Dentsu, says that the agency created the media strategy, while Toyota's media AOR Zenith executed the buy. "Over the last few years with corporate ads we have been able to pinpoint 'influentials', so part of the task has been to zero in on specific programming, versus the typical approach of buying broad swaths," he says. The buy for the effort focuses on Sunday morning news, cable news and PBS programming.

He says the buy for the 20-week campaign includes multi-week media packages with the History and Discovery channels, tied to their prime-time programs about engineering feats and technology. He says print is appearing in publications like Scientific American, Wired, Time, Newsweek and Forbes. Print will focus on the third and fourth quarter this year, with TV running through March next year.

Torrance, Calif.-based Saatchi & Saatchi handles product advertising for Toyota Motor Sales US, Toyota's Torrance-based U.S. sales arm.

The spokesperson said Toyota this fall will launch a new raft of print ads in the U.S. that highlight the economic contributions of Toyota's U.S. manufacturing footprint.