Toyota has revealed the agencies that have been successful in the first stage of its social media pitch – Saatchi & Saatchi, Oddfellows partnering with The Population, Hothouse, One Green Bean and Iris.
B&T Today revealed last week that Toyota is running the social media pitch, pitting eight agencies against each other with four agencies then to go head to head with their ideas in the public domain. Following on from this, the two best will produce further work in the new year.
Such was the strength of the ideas, according to Toyota’s Todd Connolly, manager – new media and direct marketing, that five have now been picked to go ahead of the original eight, instead of the planned four.
The agencies have now been given two weeks for production, working on a limited budget, understood to be $15,000 per campaign.
“We have taken the ideas from everyone involved, both from traditional above-the-line agencies and boutique agencies. All eight were of a high calibre, all were very fresh ideas,” said Connolly.
The Toyota marketer did not disclose the nature of the social media campaigns given the green light, but they should be evident to the public in the near future – its expected all of the campaigns will have finished their run in around six weeks time. This is the scheduled end of the campaign, but if any of the campaigns create “groundswell”, Toyota will continue the conversation with those customers.
The initial brief was for the Toyota Yaris model, but some of the ideas the agencies have come up with are transferrable to other models. While some of the campaigns use expected online social media sites like Twitter, others are more experiential or ambient, according to Connolly.
Once the two agencies have been selected for the two projects to run next year, Toyota will then decide whether it is in a position to appoint a retained agency for social media.
