I’m a hard market to reach with advertising. I hate ads. I try to avoid seeing them as much as possible. I’ve been pretty successful since I started watching all my TV shows on DVD. For an advertiser to get my attention, they have to be online.  Even then I have strategies to avoid ads. I have a weakness for watching TV shows for free on-demand. That’s how I got “exposed” to the ad campaign for the new Toyota Corolla.

I discovered that every episode of South Park is online, in it’s entirety, for free, (and legal!). I am hooked. It doesn’t matter to me that every episode has short commercials before, during and after the episode. It’s still way better than broadcast TV!

The Corolla ads are unique in their delivery—very short commercials presented in an online video player—and they’re also unique in their approach to their online audiences.

The front page of Toyota.com. Just a hint of the campaign’s theme shows up.

 

The vignettes feature actors dressed as cartoonish English stereotypes. Their stuffy 1930s formal-wear as well as what appears to be the courtyard of an old English castle contrasts with the contemporary body style of the new Corolla. In the composition of each establishing shot, color plays a noticeable roll. The castle is in beige, the actors in black, with the shiny new car in bright blue.

In contrast to most other car commercials, the vehicle never moves. It’s parked, just as it might be in your own driveway. The camera does not zoom in or pan by slowly. There is no dance music and no scantily clad young women.. This realistic depiction of what a car does most of the time lends the ad credibility. It also aids in recall, standing out as the ad that’s not franticly dynamic.

The campaign would not have been affective if my only exposure to it was on Southparkstudios.com. The campaign’s theme continues on Toyota.com. The image shown above is a screenshot of my email program. As a member of Gamefly, I receive emails letting me know when a game has been shipped out to me. It might just be a lucky break for Toyota, or it could be deliberate. If it’s deliberate, than this campaign is run by a brilliant person.

More images from the commercials gets introduced once you enter the Corolla portion of the site.

 

Even in 2008 with the internet such a big part of all our lives, I feel marketing efforts online have been lacking.  Online ads either don’t try hard enough—how many “punch the monkey” ads have you seen? Or advertisers go way to far with the viral stuff, making it a chore to hear the message. Ultimately going viral means being deceptive, and someone who feels deceived rarely feels like handing out their money.

I think the key is a mix of “classic” television advertising, much like Toyota’s ten-second ads, and digital reproduction of “billboards,” to aid in recall. The Corolla campaign is successful because they didn’t over-think the internet portion their ads, they simply made good ads that contrasted with the overflow of new car ads we see everyday. Good job for them! If you’d like to donate to my new car fund, I’m still short $15,000.