Case Study: How Toyota is Making the Minivan Popular Again with Viral Videos

It’s a known fact: Minivans just aren’t that cool and really haven’t been for quite some time now. Apparently, however, someone forgot to tell the millions of people (and counting) that have viewed Toyota’s “Swagger Wagon” online commercials over the past few weeks. And while Toyota’s latest social media campaign has been ultra-successful, a countless number of other companies have tried to come up with ideas that are as likable and shareable as the “Swagger Wagon” series, only to fall way short of the success currently being enjoyed by Toyota….

So where did Toyota go right with the “Swagger Wagon” project? The brilliant minds behind this clever campaign actually belong to the Los Angeles-based marketing company Saatchi & Saatchi LA. As DrivinMedia knows very well, and as I’m sure Saatchi & Saatchi LA would attest, the sustained success of these videos wasn’t an accident. Instead, and as is the case with essentially any and every video that goes viral, the popularity and much-needed positive PR for Toyota brought about by these videos shows businesses of all sizes what’s possible when the right team of people are pulling the web strategy strings. In short, this was done by first creating content that would resonate with Toyota’s targeted audience, followed by a well-executed plan to share the video with the masses via social media platforms.

Here are 4 specific reasons that have made Toyota’s “Swagger Wagon” campaign a complete success:

1. Emotion Creates Motion-

Emotion sells. Whether it’s comedy, sadness, anger or love; emotion creates a bond between the viewer and the video. Using trendy music mixed with comedy allowed Toyota to create the perfect marketing tool, allowing people to feel emotion. This created an attachment to the videos, ensuring that people would watch them over and over again.

2. Eyes on the Prize-

Toyota used a source that they already knew had traffic- their very own site. By traffic that they already had coming to their site, Toyota was able to spread the news about the video in a faster, more efficient way.

3. Entertain & Educate-

One thing you’ll notice in Toyota’s video series is that in every video you watch, you learn something new about the van. Whether it’s styling, versatility, available entertainment or spaciousness; Toyota was able to deliver entertaining videos, each of which is filled with selling points for the minivans. When viewers began spreading the videos throughout the web, they helped Toyota get the selling process firmly underway.

4. Caring is Sharing-

Because Toyota decided to share these videos via a mini site on YouTube, it allowed people to share the content across many online media platforms. Here is where they were shared the most:

1. Facebook: 199,287 shares
2. Twitter: 4,584 tweets
3. Blogs: 687 blog posts (plus one more to include this post)
4. YouTube: 2,770,608 views (including 1,066 comments)

These were just 4 of the key factors that contributed to the success of Toyota’s new online commercial series, but what are some others? How many vans do you think the “Swagger Wagon” videos will help sell? Do you think that all of this attention from the Sienna videos will help Toyota with their recent bad publicity?

As always, we would love to hear your thoughts…..

To find out how DrivinMedia can help you or your business reach new levels of success, please contact us here!

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Tags: advertising, marketing, social media, toyota, viral, youtube