Toyota hybrid owners are Norway’s most loyal and satisfied car owners, but attracting new customers has been a challenge.
Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation
Forget about car salesmen for a moment.
What if people could experience Hybrids with the most satisfied car drivers in Norway? Or even better: with someone they know and trust?
Before launch, we recruited a base of hybrid owners all over Norway through Toyota’s Facebook page, so proud of their cars that they, without pay, volunteered to let strangers, friends and neighbors test drive their cars.
Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results
Letting strangers test-drive your car is asking a lot. Still we doubled our goal of 150 owners. In little Norway, 300 owners covered most of the country. Both geographically, and socially on Facebook (friends and friends of friends). 1/3 of the Norwegian population remember the campaign. 1,300 test-drive sign-ups. 10x the average of test-drive signups on toyota.no in the same period. One of Norway's biggest radio shows signed up and broadcasted the show live from a Prius. 55+ newspapers ran the story. This January, Auris outsold the category leader VW Golf for the fist time.
Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service
This completely new approach generated a lot of publicity. So then, head of PR at Toyota, challenged one of Norway’s biggest radio shows - with a hybrid sceptic show host – to Try his hybrid. Five days later the entire show was broadcasted live from a Prius.
Over 1300 people signed up to test-drive during the three weeks of the campaign which is ten times the average of test-drive signups from the web. Then, in January 2014, Auris outsold the category leader VW Golf for the first time.