Toyota's Latest Social Efforts Absent of Cars

I was doing my typical evening browsing of the New York Times website, catching up on Paul Krugman’s latest rant about the financial crisis when I noticed a large Toyota ad telling me, “We See Ways to Enrich the Community.” So I did what apparently only 16% of the online population does, I clicked through the advertisement.

The ad led to Toyota’s Beyond Cars website which features a new brand campaign showcasing how Toyota is a company not only interested in building customers bland, reliable cars. No Toyota is all about making a positive difference in the environment, economy, and communities we all live in.

Site visitors are asked to share how they “see beyond today to a better tomorrow” after being told that Toyota has built over 1 million hybrid vehicles.

The “Beyond Cars” campaign commercials talk about urban gardening and about Toyota’s program to educate teens to be safer drivers. It’s your typical good corporate citizenship videos that could’ve been done by any Fortune 500 company. Some additional posts by the company mention other charitable activities by the company.

All of this is typical corporate responsibility marketing. There is nothing really that compelling or memorable about it. Nor is there any communication about Toyota products so it is true to its message; it’s definitely beyond talking cars.

User engagement is typical when there is little to no consumer benefit to share. Visitors to the site shared 29 photos, 2 videos and 22 written comments when I looked a week after finding the site. Since there is no incentive to share content, the content submission numbers are inline with similar examples I’ve seen.

It’s also quite clear from reading most of the comments from visitors, assuming most are not from Toyota employees or the marketing agency staff, that people are sharing ways to impact the environment. Perhaps most of the media buy is targeting green-minded consumers. Of course all of the content is monitored by Toyota so perhaps they are keeping comments from visitors to the intent of the site.

The odd thing is that the interface borrows from the Facebook interface, allowing visitors to “Like” ideas or submit a post to the wall. I wonder why they didn’t bring this implementation into a social community like Facebook instead of creating a custom website. Seems to me the ideas could’ve spread more easily through an interface that provides the behaviors the Toyota site is trying to replicate.

Meanwhile, Toyota is promoting a Prius Facebook application asking people to “Tag your friends on a picture of an animal herd.” Huh? Yeah, that’s what I wondered after installing the latest Prius social media app called “Random Acts of Prius.”

People earn points by accepting and passing on a random act. Acts include “skip once today instead of walking”; “refrain from sad emoticons today, use only smileys”; and “write a poem and put it on the fridge.” I wonder if I can earn my points if I just post William Carlos Williams “This is just to say” to my fridge?

The real question is who came up with these acts and more importantly why would I share it in my social network? Plus I’m not sure how any of this relates back to the Prius.

The one thing that is well done on the application is that it does attempt to be conversational and give Facebook users a way to engage within their network in a method that is natural to the community. And while I may not get the humor in the acts, some others may find the odd acts as a fun way to pass on unusual content.

The application does miss on communicating out to one’s news feed on Facebook. It never asks me to “Publish” anything I do. So that leaves all communications limited to whoever the user selects to send an act to, meanwhile no other friends see the activity and the application loses exposure to the rest of that person's network.

It’s unclear whether the Prius Facebook application and the Beyond Cars site are related. It is clear that both implementations have nothing to do with cars.

A Toyota Prius Gem on Facebook

I have been a bit critical of the online media buys from the new Toyota Prius launch team. There was some really poor content integration with Gawker Media. Thanks, now I get all of these vacuous emails about the day’s celebrity gossip and still not a peep from Toyota about what the point is of my Hybrid Page.

Fortunately, the team has released a new content media buy that actually is entertaining, reaches their target and promotes the vehicle effectively. Anything has to be better than their poorly thought out Dictionary.com homepage takeover.

The new Prius buy is a contest on Facebook using the popular online game Bejeweled. I caught the promotion because I was already a fan of the Prius on the social networking site.

The game automatically affiliates you with anyone else in your friend network who has granted the game access to their profile. You are then inserted into a team with your “friends” and the team can compete to enter weekly prize giveaways.

Unfortunately, after my stellar 9,400 points, the current giveaway is some $4,000 touch screen video game system and not a new Prius. But that doesn’t matter to Toyota as their qualification graphic only gives the arcade prize a 1/8 of screen real-estate while the Prius takes over the rest. Nothing is wrong about this of course, but I sure wish I was entering to win a car instead of video game just being “brought” to me by the Toyota Prius.

The game’s application screen also features a couple of buttons for you to “Become a Prius Fan”. This will bring you to the Toyota.com site if you are already a fan of their Facebook page. I couldn’t test it but I’d assume you go to the Prius Facebook page if you are not already a Prius fan.

Overall it’s a nice promotion of the car using a game that appeals to women. As a game, Bejeweled tests higher with women than with men and it also is well-known to those in their 30s, which fits well with the hybrid Prius’ target consumer.

Toyota Wants You to Create Your Own Hybrid Site

I had no idea what Gawker.com was until today. A desire to read about Manhattan's media news and gossip never became part of my Internet routine. Apparently, the team buying media for the 2010 Toyota Prius is up on New York City gossip and the other properties that make up Gawker Media, that surprisingly includes the automotive blog Jalopnik. A few well-known technology blogs like Gizmodo and LifeHacker are also part of the network.

The Prius team wants you to create your own Hybrid site in the Gawker network. You can checkout My Gawker Hybrid Site, but please don't assume you'll learn a thing about hybrid or green. I couldn't choose any content feeds that were specifically hybrid related nor can I create content relevant to hybrid; instead, all I could do was choose feeds from existing media properties owned by Gawker.com.

Apparently, I can someday make comments once I have "auditioned to be commenter". Audition? Maybe this is a New York thing where social media participation is like getting into Studio 54 in the late 1970s? How I audition isn't clear. I haven't received an email from Gawker explaining how the site works, nor has Toyota sent me anything after setting up my own Hybrid site.

The only sense I can make about this whole site integration is the following. Maybe hybrid on Gawker is a reference to hybrid content in the sense of mixing content or different elements of news from various sources; instead of the automotive sense of the word referring to cars running two engines - one gas and one electric?

Besides some odd online media decisions the Toyota Prius is doing very well with its core audience with over 75,000 pre-orders and waiting lists for the car in Japan. The national TV ads look great too with their creative concept that brings a human element into the typical green fields, blue skies and bright flowers found in just about every hybrid commercial.

If there are any thoughts on what the Gawker link is that makes this work for Toyota Prius, please share. I just don't get why someone would want to create a Hybrid site on Gawker. What purpose does a Gawker user site accomplish? If it's just a portal, it's a very weak one at best. Perhaps, it's just that the MRI score for the Gawker media properties indexed high for the target consumer Toyota is going after and there really isn't much thought beyond letting users create a site.

Other thoughts? Any Gawker site users out there who can enlighten this blogger?

Toyota Prius Undefined

The new 2010 Toyota Prius recently launched their media for the campaign “Harmony Between Man, Nature and Machine”. From John Voelcker, Editor-in-Chief of All About Prius, the campaign is all about “highlighting the car's latest features, the campaign paints the Prius as offering what buyers want--advanced technology, more power, interior space, safety, and the magic 50-MPG figure--while simultaneously giving nature what it wants: lower tailpipe emissions.”

The team is reaching out to some other media outlets to build awareness outside of normal automotive channels (what I mean is not marketing in auto related websites or on portals.) They are planning some content within How Stuff Works and have already implemented a homepage wallpaper on Dictionary.com promoting the Prius.

Let’s discuss the Prius Dictionary.com example. Right now it is simply a beautiful image of a Prius that covers the homepage. It’s a nice break from traditional banner advertisements. Unfortunately where it leaves off is in getting some good content integration in the Dictionary site. For example, type in “Prius” to get a definition and all you get is “–adjective (in prescriptions) before; former.” And the best part is the “sponsored results” above the definition provide links to the 2009 Prius and the all new Honda Insight.

What Toyota should have done is, at least, own the Prius definition page advertising if people search Dictionary.com. They also could’ve included a definition about the car, if the Dictionary.com site would let them (I’m not sure if they have restrictions on only formal definitions can exist.)

It will be interesting to see how Toyota markets the new Prius against some competition from it’s Honda Insight neighbor. Already, Toyota is making some great traction as pre-orders have reached 75,000 units; though, I caution that number being customers only. What I’ve seen is a reporting of pre-orders also including dealership orders. Also, the Prius’ main competitor the Honda Insight isn’t getting rave reviews, at least from the world’s most anti-hybrid car reviewer – Jeremy Clarkson – who called it “Biblically horrible.”

Smug Shoppers Cutting Back

Oil has dropped considerably, losing 50% of its price since hitting $100 a year ago. A global economic crisis is setting in and consumers are cutting back on their auto buying in a dramatic way. This change has dramatically impacted hybrid sales. Yes, hybrids - the darlings of the automotive industry as consumers were supposed to move to green vehicles in a major way after seeing $4 plus gas prices in 2008.

Well guess what? Gas prices fell more than half in late 2008 and hybrid sales followed with a 53% drop in sales from a year earlier, compared to a 37% drop in car sales overall. Go figure, someone isn't as willing to pay a $3,000 - $5,000 markup for adding an electric engine to a gasoline powered car when their wealth is falling and their job stability is in doubt.

All of this change should shift how hybrid cars are marketed.

You have to wonder first if the hybrid message is losing its cache with the newer innovative technologies like Electric Vehicle (EV) cars coming in 2010 that will certainly be the focus, desire of the green consumers. I also question if hybrids will simply lose sales because its consumers are those in the lower $100k household income range that are being impacted considerably by the loss of value in their McMansions and stock portfolios and are already cutting back considerably on luxury labels like Coach, Williams-Sonoma, and Juicy Couture. Hybrids have come to be more of a status symbol than a true revolution in automotive design. Don't get me wrong, they are a step in the right direction, just not a major shift since they still require gasoline engines to function.

The marketing shift should focus beyond just green-minded consumers. I think Toyota has done well with their Lexus Power of h campaign, but it is solely tailored to a green consumer and does not extend beyond them. Certainly, green consumers are already aware of the hybrids and it is now more about reaching to the customer who isn't buying green products and showing them that hybrids aren't all flowers, blue skies and green valleys. It's about making hybrid a more intelligent choice (e.g. innovative technology, proven efficiencies) and showing hybrid isn't something that is just for wimps or smug greens.

It will be interesting to see how hybrid marketing evolves in the coming years, especially as hybrids start spanning different vehicle segments. Cadillac is definitely struggling with its Escalade Hybrid, but that doesn't surprise anyone. The good news is that cars like the Tesla Roadster (full electric) and the new Ford Fusion Hybrid aren't tin can econoboxes or vanilla looking sedans. Some style is finally coming into the green vehicle segment.