Toyota –100 Cars for Good
helping causes deliver on their mission
role: copywriter
THE CHALLENGE
Toyota had a rough year of PR.
For years “Toyota” had been synonymous with “safety,” but suddenly they were forced to recall thousands of vehicles and were in desperate need of a good news headline. They wanted to jump on the bandwagon of giving away money in a social media contest.
THE SOLUTION
Amplify the good.
My partner and I had bigger ideas. We thought Toyota could do something more authentic and impactful that most other brands couldn’t do. We wanted to give away cars to people and organizations who could use them for good. And not just a couple, one hundred. There were a lot of legal hurdles to overcome. But, we thought through all the details and had a bulletproof presentation that we ran from the little old philanthropy team all the way up to the CMO to get the initiative approved.
We built a custom Facebook application to keep the entire experience in one place and make it easily shareable. Each day for 100 days, users could go to the app to learn about five different non-profits, and vote for the one they wanted to get a set of wheels.
The non-profits were given a toolkit to help them promote their cause, and drive their fans to vote on their day. By design, this gave Toyota tremendous word-of-mouth reach, building goodwill for their brand while doing good for others.
RESULTS
The good goes on.
The project was such a success that they did it again for the next three years, and it still continues in Canda today.
Disclosure: I was headed to a completely cause-based agency when this began production, so it was completed by my teammates Jonathan Pelleg and Jonathan Granewich who executed perfectly on the vision.