Toyota to use Olympic campaign to explain mobility vision

DALLAS — Toyota wasn't always a car company. It started as a spinoff of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works in the 1930s, as scion Kiichiro Toyoda sought to apply the lessons of his father's groundbreaking innovations in textile production to the rolling tech marvel of the moment, the automobile.

Now one of the world's largest automakers, Toyota Motor Corp. is attempting another such reinvention — from car company to mobility company. And heeding a call to action from President Akio Toyoda, grandson of Kiichiro, it's leveraging an eight-year Olympic sponsorship deal and its first global marketing campaign to lay out its vision of mobility for the world.

Instead of Camrys and Priuses, the campaign will showcase Toyota's research into support robots for the elderly, all-terrain wheelchairs, a guidance device for the blind and vehicle pods that use artificial intelligence to bond with their owners.

"This isn't just a marketing campaign. This is the company's expansion of who we are," Jack Hollis, general manager of the Toyota brand in North America, told Automotive News. "This was built out of Mr. Toyoda's belief that nobody should be without the ability to move freely."

Mobility remains a vague concept for traditional automakers, derided as a cheap buzzword by skeptics within the industry and trotted out just as often to impress investors on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley. It has come to encompass everything from shared bicycles to self-driving taxicabs.

With its status as a top-level Olympic sponsor — the first automaker in that tier and the first partner in the International Olympic Committee's "mobility" category — Toyota sees a golden opportunity to bring attention to its conception of mobility and to a portfolio that's expanding beyond automobiles.

"This is a Toyota brand campaign that's based upon the human movement company," said Hollis. "You will see products but not all of them as cars. You will see mobility devices. You will see human personal movement apparatuses. You will see it in a different light."

The changes at Toyota go beyond just messaging. At headquarters, Toyoda has been shaking up management to elevate key experts and decision makers and pushing the company to execute on future-focused projects to keep up with competitors that are already testing self-driving taxis, advanced electric motors and transportation models beyond car ownership. The company has cast the efforts as a response to "changes of unprecedented speed and scale."

"A crucial battle has begun," Toyoda said last month, "not one about winning or losing, but one about surviving or dying."

The global marketing initiative, dubbed "Start Your Impossible," was launched last month in 24 countries as part of Toyota's eight-year sponsorship of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. It encompasses next year's Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and the 2020 summer games in Tokyo, which will be a showcase for Toyota products and homegrown Japanese technology. The slogan urges its global audience to start moving toward a personal goal that may seem unreachable.

The campaign consists of the Web page mobilityforall.com; TV commercials featuring "two types of heroes: people and products;" social media including long-form videos of people meeting a personal challenge; and print, out-of-home and social media ads focused on athletes or Toyota mobility products.

"Fifty percent of the campaign is around folks that have overcome a challenge with mobility, whether they be Olympic athletes or others, and the other 50 percent of the campaign is around devices that takes us beyond cars and trucks, into overcoming any type of challenge of movement," said Ed Laukes, marketing chief for Toyota North America.

Hollis and Laukes are leading campaign development with input from global marketing teams and agencies Saatchi & Saatchi in the U.S. and Dentsu in Japan.

The launch video ad starts with a toddler crawling, and features a teenager playing basketball in an electric wheelchair and Olympic and Paralympic athletes during rigorous training. There's also a glimpse of a flying car before the ad ends with an elderly man running uphill in a tank top and shorts.

Sixteen athletes from around the world are featured in the initiative, representing the Olympic and Paralympic Games. (Toyota is separately involved in a Special Olympics sponsorship.)

And what about the scores of vehicles Toyota designs and manufactures, from subcompact cars to heavy trucks, plus EVs and hybrids? They'll be absent from the global campaign but will show up in parallel sales efforts by Toyota's worldwide distributors during the games.

"We're still selling cars and trucks. We're still focusing on providing great mobility within that framework," said Laukes. But "Toyota feels that we have a responsibility to improve mobility ... and that means the ability to get out of bed in the morning to be able to move across the globe."