Days ahead off the Big game, Toyota launched a female empowerment Super Bowl spot that features Antoinette ‘Toni’ Harris and which promoted the new Rav4 through the idea of ‘changing the game’
Harris is the first female football player who doesn’t play a specialist position to be offered football college scholarships and the objective of the campaign is to draw synergies between her and the Rav4 in terms of ‘shattering perceptions’ and ‘leaving assumptions in the dust’.
The gender barrier breaking ad is led by the 22-year-old Harris, who was offered multiple football scholarships from the likes of Bethany College and an NAIA school in Kansas, and is a sophomore defensive back at East Los Angeles College.
Narrated by Jim Nantz, who will commentate on Sunday’s Big Game for CBS, the 60-second ad draws dramatic comparisons between Harris and its new RAV4.
The creative features Harris putting her football kit into the back of a Toyota RAV4 and then follows her intense training regime while the Nantz voiceover explains how she defied the odds.
The hero commercial, debuting online on 30 January and airing on television during the Super Bowl on 3 February, is teased and supported by a suite of matching online content pieces also featuring Harris.
Real strength comes from within. 2.3.2019 #RAV4 pic.twitter.com/6hWqs2x83E
— Toyota USA (@Toyota) January 28, 2019
The campaign span television, digital, social and PR and Toyota also plans to extend the campaign by filming with Harris and her family while they watch the Super Bowl.
The initiative was developed via agency Burrell Communications (which positions itself as ‘transcultural and multidimensional), with support from Saaatchi & Saatchi and Zenith Media, while and the lead spot was directed by Joe Pytka (who has helmed more than 80 Super Bowl commercials).
“Both of them are changing the game,” said Ed Laukes, group VP of Toyota division marketing at Toyota North America at a PR and media event unveiling the new campaign held in New York on 29 january.
“This is the most unique story I have ever heard in sports,” said Super Bowl spot veteran director Pytka.
“It’s a perfect time in our society when women are becoming empowered as equal, as more than equal.”
Harris herself said that she hoped the commercial would further raise her profile for potential coaches and help her achieve her ultimate goal of joining the National Football League.
Comment:
Following in the footsteps of several other auto brands who have used Super Bowl spots for female equality messaging, from Nike Football’s 2019 ‘Girls Of Gwinnett – Flag Football’ campaign,
to Audi’s 2017 ‘Daughter’ equal pay commercial (see case study), it seems that Toyota USA is now leaning in now ‘leaning in’ to female empowerment marketing.
But be warned Toyota marketers, as Michelle Obama said recently about ‘leaning in’ – “Sometimes that shit doesn’t work”.
This 2019 work follows on from Toyota’s 2018 Big Game marketing burst (its biggest ever in terms of financial investment) which included three in-game ads led by the much discussed ‘unity’ themed commercial featuring an imam, a monk, a priest and a rabbi all getting together in a Toyota Tundra to attend a football game.
The campaign is an example of Toyota’s current ‘Total Toyota’ marketing strategy, first unveiled four years ago, which includes multicultural marketing as a key pillar and which sees different agencies working together.
We like the approach and the feel of this Big game spot and it certainly leveraged this year’s key theme – female empowerment – but we can’t help but comment about the ‘pivot’.
The ‘pivot’, the device/link that ties the creative theme and content to the product, really just justn’t work very smoothly in this spot.
Links:
Toyota USA
http://www.youtube.com/user/ToyotaUSA
Burrell Communications
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