Ashes Rivals Vaughan & McGrath Race Toyotas To #SettlesTheScore

Toyota, a sponsor of both the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and Cricket Australian (ACB), is activating its partnerships through a campaign that pits cricket legends and Anglo-Oz rivals Michael Vaughan and Glenn McGrath in a head-to-head, one-off driving challenge to ‘Settle The Score’.

Blending its two commercial partnerships by leveraging the fierce and long-running rivalry between the two teams, the campaign runs under the hashtag #settlethescore and sees the former England captain and the former Australian fast bowler compete at the wheel of a GT86 coupe.

The contest for personal and national pride took place on a specially designed course at a UK race circuit Willow Wood Park and aims to focus attention not just on the Ashes, but also on ‘speed’, ‘handling’ and ‘tactics’ and on the ‘fastest lap’.

Instead of claiming the ancient Ashes urn, the winner of this sponsor race lifts a brand new trophy – The Dust.

The contest, which is not dissimilar to Top Gear’s ‘Star In A Reasonably Priced Car’ segment, is led by an online film created by agency Saatchi & Saatchi London.

Whilst the loser agrees never talk about the 2005 Ashes, or to gloat or complain about the result of the 2015 Ashes.

The initiative, which runs under Toyota’s ‘Always A Better Way’ umbrella marcoms idea, airs across social media channels and in the test grounds during breaks in play at Ashes Tests.

It was a response to a Toyota brief to bring the brand’s ‘Always A Better Way’ philosophy to life through The Ashes.

According to Saatchi executive creative director Andy Jex: ‘Everyone knows the only way to settle an old feud is an automotive tear up – just look at Grease, Ben Hur and Days of Thunder.’

In addition to Jex, the Saatchi & Saatchi team included fellow ECD Rob Potts, creatives Ben Mills and Matt Butterfield, planner Paul Warwick, account handlers Adrian Ash and Will Hooker and producers Josh Sanders, Georgie Hammond Chambers and Darapen Vongsa-nga.

‘Glenn and I had a number of hard battles on the pitch over the years and I’ve missed those since I retired from the game,’ adds Michael Vaughan.

‘This challenge has given us both a great opportunity to re-ignite that competitive spirit and I can assure you that both of us left everything out on that race track.’

‘This was a new kind of challenge for us, but as sportsmen it brought back those competitive instincts,’ comments Glenn McGrath.

‘The fact we were able to do this by driving great cars on a world-famous track made the occasion all the more exciting and the will to win even greater.’

The media buying agency was Zenith Optimedia, the production outfit was Agile, post was by Prodigious and the director was Zac Ella.

Comment

2015 Ashes activation certainly seems to have been dominated by leveraging the rivalry between the teams and the countries.

Toyota’s approach to leveraging this age-old enmity may be high-speed, but is fairly polite when compared to some of the more sledging-style sponsorship work and Ashes advertising activity.

Among the more edgy, combative and controversial Ashes rivalry activations in 2015 were perennial bad-boy bookie Paddy Power’s ‘The Only Aussie We Don’t Want To Get Out Is Rolf Harris’ ad

Paddy Power to 'destroy' Rolf Harris Ashes ad after 'Twitter leak' http://t.co/Dugfh5cFM2 via @samburnejames @prweek pic.twitter.com/lFAtzpDEjM

— BrandRepublic (@BrandRepublic) July 21, 2015