The Yaris is Toyota’s low-end economy offering. Compared to the fun colours, youthful image and nifty features of other cars in the segment, it is significantly lacking. Our mission was to move 40,000 units without any TV or print media. The entire campaign had to be digital.Considering the lackluster nature of the car along with the fact that our only channel was digital, we decided to reach out to nerds. Nerds don’t care about fancy cars in the first place. They also spend most of their time online. The challenge was creating content that resonated with these incredibly smart people who can sniff out a phony in 2 seconds. Our 'nerd-speak' needed to be very genuine. We had to become nerds ourselves. Good thing that we already were. Nerds, that is.

itsacar.com is a one of a kind Google Chrome experiment built with the latest buzz technology including HTML5, WebGL, real-time physics, adaptive sound, CSS3 and multi-user socket communication. A looping tour video of the car plays while multiple users can interact with the site simultaneously. Comedian Michael Showalter dryly walks users through the 'features' of the car such as wheels, windows and cup holders. Along with being able to alter the behaviour of the host and the nature of the content, savvy users have the ability to grab all the open source code and recreate the site to their liking.

We reached 80% of our sales goal by November alone. An over whelming majority of website traffic came from earned media. Twitter blew up with great comments like:"just watched @mshowalter car commercial with girlfriend and she laughed a fart out. 1st time ive heard her fart in 3 yrs. thank you!""I'm completely willing to sell all my Earthly posesions and my own mother in order to purchase a Toyota. Thanks, @mshowalter.""Yes. I am now a fan of Michael Showalter and the Toyota Yaris. Thanks advertising: http://t.co/l0T7fjhf"This is lifestyle branding 101, but twisted to fit the web in new way. We celebrated the simplicity of the car, and we were able to take some big risks with the medium, as well as the sarcasm. This is one of those great examples of a brand being true to its target without worrying about what anyone else may think.