Toyota New Zealand has dominated NZ’s vehicle category in many measures from brand love to sales figures for more than four decades. Over that time it has refreshed it’s brand positioning about every 10 years. We were tasked with doing so again, this time with technology, innovation and sustainability as key themes - not what Toyota has be traditionally renown for in NZ. A consideration for a new platform was to adopt the positioning line used in the US, Let’s Go Places. This is what was ultimately decided on. Our objective was to give meaning to it in a distinctly New Zealand way. The launch idea was to tell three charming New Zealand centric stories – something Toyota is famous for – to speak to Toyota NZ’s innovation and ambitions for future New Zealand.Since launching, Toyota’s brand metrics have strengthened even further. Brand love which is always a strong market

This film finds three Kiwi teenagers in space suits standing on the surface of Mars talking about how bad it would be to have to live here. The dialogue is imbued with Kiwi-isms – “Manu” means doing ‘bombs’ into the water. It is finally revealed that they are actually standing on rocks and swimming in a beautiful New Zealand river, and this rather bleak context was playing out in their imaginations. The endline is about the ambition of getting to carbon neutral rather than Mars – a much more relevant and literally down-to-Earth target to aim for. Some think this film is having a light-hearted dig at Elon Musk. We wouldn’t say that.

Since launching, Toyota’s brand metrics have strengthened even further. Brand love which is always a strong market leading measure for Toyota has reached an all-time high! And their ‘Brand with Momentum’ score has jumped back to number one for the first time in eight years, passing both Hyundai and Kia. We were also approached by the New Zealand government’s Road Safety organisation to see if we would put their logo on our one of our ads because they thought it was so strong. (We turned them down.)