It’s 2017 and, across Europe, Toyota’s hybrid moment has surely come. The VW ‘dieselgate’ scandal, and the engine debate it triggered, has opened the door for hybrids. Toyota’s hybrids were launched back in 1997, and now, as competitors fast track their own models, Toyota can finally capitalise on those years of investment. Can’t it?
Except, even with significant financial incentives now available for buyers, the overwhelming majority of car purchasers continue to eschew hybrid vehicles, either sticking with petrol or postponing their purchase altogether.
Why? A host of reasons, some functional, some emotional, varying by audience and market.
That became Toyota’s challenge for us. How to tackle this myriad of consumer barriers to hybrid, simultaneously and fast, before the automotive category got its act together and Toyota’s moment of hybrid advantage was lost?
The&Partnership used a radically different approach to audience research. We used the power of data and technology to seize the day: sizing barriers, unlocking insights and informing a vast system of creative content. Each element addressed a different audience challenge, all served dynamically to audiences at the perfect point in their car buying journey. This insightled, multi-dimensional approach meant multiple consumer barriers could be cleverly tackled at the same time and led to exceptional sales growth of Toyota hybrids across key markets in Europe .
Within three months of the campaign, we saw a clear uplift in consideration: increasing Toyota hybrid search by 57%; increasing Toyota hybrid webpage visits by 36% and test-drive requests by 83%. Toyota’s image of being the ‘hybrid leader’ consistently trended up (2-5% depending on market). Finally, we achieved record hybrid sales: up 26.86%, much more than overall Toyota car sales, which only increased 3.38% across major European markets.
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