*That* Toyota ad: The Creepy Calamity

The whole web is crossing off tabs in disgust and sending out complaining tweets over the outrageous Toyota ad that is the winner of the Clever Film Competition. It involves a young boy and a girl’s father laughing about the ‘good pounding’ his daughter will get later and how the boy will ‘have her on her back early.’ Far from being clever, the public have shown outrage and disgust over such a grimy ad. The advert was produced and directed by Play TV, based in Brisbane. It was selected by the competition jury (whose members haven’t been revealed) from ten other finalists in the competition. The jury was ashamedly made up of Saatchi & Saatchi staff, Toyota representatives and other members of the Yaris target demographic market. I think most of the public agree with Lee Hopkins that “the idea of ‘telling it like it really is’ is NOT ‘cutting edge funny’. Maaan.”

Nobody heard of the ad when it was first made and it was never going to be screened on TV, however these things always seem to come back to bite you in the ass as it was later pronounce the winner of this competition. Toyota has done nothing to save their sexist, incestuous rep as they are cowardly arguing that they didn’t actually commission the advert. Is that the best they can come up with? Punch has summarised ‘The fact that the ad is not being screened (obviously it would never get the green light anyway) but is only out there in cyberspace as a viral exercise doesn’t let Toyota off the hook either.’ Punch goes on to say ‘While it’s obviously an attack on the dignity of women it does men a major disservice too by suggesting they’re so screwed-up that they actually say disgusting s**t like this.’

The ad had quickly been dubbed ‘abuser-generated content’ instead of user generated content as the video is being posted over more and more sites, long since the original clip was taken down. While the old saying goes all publicity is good publicity, I think you only have to look at this calamity of this advert along with the Tiger Woods disaster to know that when it comes to marketing that is not always the case. It would be easy to point a finger at technology and talk about the impracticalities of the internet but Mumbrella succinctly explains that ‘In the end, it wasn’t social media that created this disaster for the brand – it was the lack of social media savvy.’  It may be cultural issues, the maker generally thought people would find this amusing. However it goes to show not just anyone can be a success in online marketing – very few advertising agencies are genuinely active and involved in social media. There are also only a few who have really got to grips with PR. If you’re looking for proof you will find that there are only a handful of ad agencies that have a thriving social media profile.

Like the Tiger Woods fiasco, Toyota are doing themselves a disservice by not doing more to publicly correct the error as rumours are already spreading that they did it to get people talking and create some hype around the brand. A online comment said ‘For the agency and creative team it simply exposes their desire to self promote above all else… With the demise of the “scam ad” these briefs are the only opportunity for agencies to prove how brilliant they really are.’ These kind of remarks damage the brands personality making them out to be hungry money making machines rather than a brand people can trust.

One comment on the competitions Facebook groups wall that rings true is: ‘I highly doubt young men would now choose to drive a Yaris just because they saw a willing young girl sexually objectified in front of her father in this clip. “She can take a good pounding in any direction”. Really quite sick and ridiculous.’

Image by Mumbrella

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