2006 SPECIAL MERIT AWARD - BEST MEDIA OWNER PROPOSAL WINNER

CAMPAIGN - Can't wait for tomorrow

AGENCY - Fairfax

CLIENT - Toyota Motor Corporation Australia

SPONSORED BY
www.mediafederation.org.au

OBJECTIVE

In early 2005, Toyota set the market a unique challenge. It wanted to demonstrate its commitment to the future technology of car manufacturing via an innovative advertising campaign. The basis of the communication centred around four pillars: technology, performance, innovation and the environment. Toyota wanted to showcase its willingness to embrace technological advances and wished to increase owner loyalty and make its marque desirable to non-Toyota owners. Toyota had succeeded in owning the sensible, reliable and practical brand attributes, but needed to move to a more inspiring brand image.

CAMPAIGN

As a long-term media partner of Toyota, Good Weekend saw this brief as an opportunity to entwine Toyota's four key pillars in a way that literally brought to life the "Can't wait for tomorrow" tagline. The strategic thought was to marry Good Weekend's space in time - the weekend - and deliver it early by way of a Good Weekend preview edition - in effect altering the day of distribution to satisfy Toyota's communication objectives.

Promotion took place in Fairfax press, on radio and TV. Published on 17 July 2005, the preview edition gave readers a taste of the weekend's special bumper "Design & Technology" issue. Inserted into the SMH and The Age, the edition was a completely separate magazine written by the editorial team. The concept became an integrated advertising proposal with true reader benefit.

The key to the proposal's success was that Good Weekend was able to shift traditional thinking of the product to integrate with Toyota's brand tagline. A seamless flow of engaging and credible journalism, delivered to a quality target audience, set the creative agenda and gained cut through and category share of voice in a never before seen media vehicle.

RESULTS

While no one element of the campaign was singled out for brand tracking purposes, there is strong anecdotal evidence and positive feedback among the target market that the execution of a preview issue was a considerable and valuable component of the brand launch plan. Advertising involving this level of editorial integration is often received negatively by savvy readers - this was not the case with this execution, as evidenced in circulation spikes across both days and letters to the editor. This execution went on to win a Caxton Award in 2005 for the most innovative use of a Newspaper Inserted Magazine.

JUDGE'S COMMENTS

"This category was incredibly close. A fantastic one-off idea just edged out a superb case of multiplatform integration."