Tag: Toyota

Toyota Taps IBM’s Watson To Generate Ad Scripts

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Toyota is the latest brand to use IBM’s machine learning program Watson to aid its marketing campaign. To promote its Rav4 Crossover SUV model, the auto brand worked with agency Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles to create an interesting digital video campaign built around the idea of encouraging people to crossover and try something new. They supplied Watson with the world’s top 1,000 activities — such as biking, dancing, and cooking — and asked Watson to pair two activities that are rarely associated. The agency then used the Watson-generated pairings to create 300 unique videos, which are being targeted at users on Facebook and Instagram based on the activities they already enjoy doing. For example, a Pilate-lover will see a video spot that suggests they try cosplaying while a kick-boxing enthusiasts may get bird-watching.

What Brands Need To Do
This is a fun, if a bit trite, application of machine learning in marketing campaigns. It provides the agency with some interesting pairings to use for their creatives and, perhaps more importantly, gives the campaign an intriguing, powered-by-A.I. hook. As we pointed out in our CES trend recap, machine learning and artificial intelligence will start to make a strong impact in marketing by powering conversational services and next-level personalizations. Brands need to start identifying the kind of unique dataset that they own and feed it into machine learning services to either learn more about their customers or deliver a more personalized customer experience.

 

Source: AdAge

 

Toyota Connects Addressable TV Ads To Dealership Visits

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Toyota marketers for the Gulf States region ran an addressable TV ad campaign last year that connected TV ads to dealership visits. In June and July, Gulf States Toyota targeted 652,000 households in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas based on data showing they were in-market car shoppers.

Working with partners such as audience data provider Experian, addressable TV ad seller AT&T AdWorks, and mobile location data firm NinthDecimal, the regional Toyota marketers were able to measure whether the TV ads led to an increase in foot traffic to dealerships by monitoring how many anonymized mobile devices associated with the targeted households showed up in stores. Pleased with the results, the regional Toyota marketer is planning to launch a similarly hyper-targeted campaign this summer.

What Brands Need To Do
This is the latest example of how brands can leverage the latest ad tech development in offline attribution to better measure their campaign performances. As more and more brands come to realize the importance of location data in measuring the full impact of digital campaigns, more and more ad platforms such as the ones from Google, Facebook, and Snapchat have all made efforts to team up with location data providers and improve their capability in tracking offline attributions. More brands may benefit from this trend and work with ad tech partners and consumer data providers to more accurately measure the real-world impact of their TV and digital campaigns.

 

Source: AdAge

Toyota, Taco Bell & Starbucks Make Play For Branded Content

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
More and more brands are embracing branded and sponsored content in order to reach the increasingly distracted customers. This week alone saw three big brands making a play for content marketing. Toyota is sponsoring an upcoming original YouTube series created by Buzzfeed video creator and star Ashley Perez, aligning its brand message of “helping millennials go places” with the show’s theme of empowerment. Earlier this week, Taco Bell debuted an original weekly video series “Taco Tales” on its YouTube page, aiming to entertain and connect with customers with “stories that could only happen to Taco Bell fans.” Starbucks, on the other hand, is teaming up with three writers from “The Simpsons” for an original video series, which will come in the form of animated shorts that highlight Starbucks’ culture and feature its stores, the baristas, and the customers.

What Brands Should Do
As consumer attention becomes increasingly fragmented and the subpar mobile ad experience drives many users to use ad-blockers {a trend we explained in depth in the Ad Avoidance section of our Outlook 2016), it is becoming more and more difficult for brands to reach their desired audience via traditional media channels. Therefore, brands should take a cue from Mercedes’s influencer efforts and be willing to explore new forms of advertising such as sponsored or branded content, as well as new media formats such as VR and 360-degree video, to circumvent consumers’ growing ad aversion and pique their interest.

 

Sources: As linked in the article

NBC To Air Live Ads For Oreo And Toyota During “Hairspray” Broadcast

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
NBC is set to shake things up a bit for the upcoming broadcast of its live production of Hairspray by experimenting with native, in-program advertising. Instead of cutting to a commercial break, Oreo and Toyota will promote their products with live commercials performed in character by the cast of the musical in a retro style that harkens back to the early days of television commercials.

Moreover, the show will also feature a song-and-dance number inspired by Reddi-wip’s milk delivery history. In addition, NBC will also run two segments of sponsored content during two breaks with brand sponsors’ messages showing alongside behind-the-scene looks via split-screen.

What Brands Should Do
This is not the first time that NBC has tried out this type of native ads to appeal to an increasingly ad-avoidant TV audience, as the broadcaster substituted some regular ad spots during its primetime shows in February with AmEx-sponsored native content from the respective shows. This upcoming initiative seems to be a natural continuation of this trend. At a time when ad blockers and subscription-based streaming services are helping millions of viewers actively avoid ads, it is important for brands and media owners to take measures in response and come up with new ways, such as sponsored content and native ads, to engage with their audience.

For more information on how brands should leverage interesting branded content to earn consumer eyeballs, check out the Ad Avoidance section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: AdAge

USA Today Network Releases Its First VR News Show With Toyota As Sponsor

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
USA Today Network announced on Thursday the release of its weekly virtual reality news show, VRtually There, for which the publisher has inked partnerships with YouTube and Toyota as the distribution channel and brand sponsor, respectively. Each episode of VRtually There will be around six minutes long and include segments for original editorial content, branded VR content, as well as a VR ad unit that USA Today calls a “cubemercial.” Toyota is the first brand to pilot the cubemercial to promote its 2017 Toyota Camry.

What Brands Should Do
This launch serves as another example for VR content development as media companies race to capitalize on the VR boom. As content creators improve their skills in producing immersive content, they offer brands opportunities to create new types of branded content to engage their audiences with. Although virtual reality may still be a few years away from mass adoption (as we predicted in the 2020 section in our Outlook 2016), brands looking to stay ahead of the innovation curve would be smart to work with content creators and start developing their own branded VR content today.

 

Source: Ad Exchanger

Toyota Sponsors Yahoo’s Livestream Of The Stagecoach Music Festival

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Another brand has jumped on the live-stream bandwagon as Toyota announced it will be sponsoring the livestreams of the country music festival Stagecoach on Yahoo and Tumblr this weekend. The announcement came just one week after T-Mobile sponsored YouTube’s livestream of Coachella. As part of its campaign to promote the music content site “Music Moves You” that the company recently launched, Toyota says it is expecting the livestreams to reach “millions” over the weekend. The sponsorship includes Toyota branding at the top of the live-stream player’s page, as well as 30-second and shorter pre-roll video spots.

What Brands Need To Do
Livestreaming is starting to explode across digital channels with Facebook making a strong push for its Live video feature in the past few months, which creates new opportunities for brands seeking to engage with online audiences in real time. In fact, recent research from Brandlive shows that 44% of companies created live video content in 2015. Therefore, now is the time for brands to start exploring possible sponsorships with live-streaming platforms for events that may appeal to their target audiences.

 

Source: AdWeek

How Toyota Is Using Custom Twitter Emoji To Connect With Football Lovers

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Automaker Toyota has become the latest band to join in on the branded emoji craze and partnered with Twitter for to reach football fans. Positioned as “a digital tailgate cheer,” Toyota will launch a contest to encourage football fans to tweet its new campaign hashtag #letsgofan, which comes with a custom fan finger emoji. The automaker is also hoping that this would help drive fans to download FanMoji, a branded custom keyboard app that Toyota recently launched as a part of its new sports-centric campaign.

What Brands Need To Do
Twitter started testing hashtag-specific custom emojis earlier this year, with Coca-Cola providing the first branded emoji in September. From ABC’s TGIT lineup to brands like Dove and Starbucks, those mini digital stickers that reward consumers for tweeting out branded hashtags are quickly proliferating across the twitterverse, offering brands a good visual signifier to engage the fans with.

 

Source: Digiday

 

Toyota Gets Local With Geo-Targeted Snapchat Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: AdAge

Toyota is getting on Snapchat, marking the first time ever an automotive brand has utilized the popular messaging app’s geo-targeting ad format. As a latest evolution of its “Let’s Go Places” campaign, the carmaker is targeting Snapchat users in the great Los Angeles area, who will soon start seeing promoted video ads with city-specific content inside Snapchat’s localized Live Story feed, a new feature debuted earlier this year.

Of course, Toyota is not first brand to tap into Snapchat’s localized ad offers. Last week, McDonald’s started offering location-activated Geo-filters for users visiting the 14,000 McDonald’s stores across the States. As Snapchat and other messaging apps start leveraging their mobile-first nature and resulting location-awareness into sophisticated ad formats, we expect to see more brands to get on board.

Why Car Manufacturers Need To Work With Tech Companies

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: New York Times

Toyota caused a stir in the connected car market when the company was quoted by the NY Times as saying that it currently has “no plans” to offer either Android Auto or Apple CarPlay in its new models, despite being listed by Apple as an official CarPlay partner.

As more and more traditional OEM in-car equipment, such as GPS systems and CD players, are rapidly being replaced by newer, mobile-based substitutes, car buyers will understandably expect some compatibility with their mobile devices. Going against consumer behavior is not the best move for car manufacturers, especially when most seem to lack the technological expertise to develop an integrated and user-friendly in-car OS.

Toyota Showcases New Oculus-Powered App

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: The Guardian

We have seen virtual reality used for simulated test drives before, but Toyota is putting the VR technology to new use with its TeenDrive365 app. Unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show, the Oculus Rift app works as a “distracted driving simulator”, challenging people to drive safely amid various distractions, including babbling passengers, loud traffic noise, and even virtual text messages. Partly designed to showcase the safety features of the new Toyota models, the app also shows the potential for brands to incoporate innovative technologies like virtual reality.