xcel
02-05-2007, 02:07 AM
Toyota packs 53-foot trailers with digital exhibits and learning stations to help market its energy-saving vehicles around the country. (http://www.dailybreeze.com/business/articles/5548371.html)
http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/Toyota_Mobile_Hybrid_Experience.jpgMuhammed El-Hasan - Daily Breeze - Feb. 4, 2007
Toyota - Mobile Hybrid Experience Roadshow.
Toyota foresees this scene repeating itself nationwide:
While visiting a state fair with the wife and son, you notice a crowd milling in front of a 53-foot double-expandable trailer with blue sides and awnings.
Your son bolts into the trailer and begins to work the steering wheel of a mock vehicle cockpit in front of a 50-inch monitor.
Your wife enters and peruses a display that indicates between which cities she can drive a low-emission Toyota hybrid vehicle on a single tank of gas.
And you decide to take a test drive in Toyota Motor Corp.'s industry-leading Prius hybrid.
A few months later -- after considering all the options amid some nagging from your son -- you and your wife decide to buy the family's first gas-electric hybrid vehicle. And it's a Toyota.
Last month, Torrance-based Toyota Motor Sales USA, the automaker's U.S. sales and marketing headquarters, launched a nationwide marketing campaign dubbed "Highway to the Future: Mobile Hybrid Experience."
The 18-month campaign involves two identical trailers traveling separately to more than 150 events including state fairs, auto shows, museums, environmental gatherings and other venues.
The campaign is designed to offer consumers a firsthand encounter with automotive hybrid technology through digital exhibits and driving or riding in the vehicles.
"This is a museumlike experience. It's not a sales job," said Doug Coleman, advanced technology vehicle manager for Toyota. "What we're doing is trying to educate people. There's a huge mass of people who don't know about hybrids. They can come away feeling like, 'Hey, this is interesting. I feel that Toyota is trying to educate me without the sales environment.' "
Toyota plans to increasingly take this approach, in addition to the more conventional marketing staple of placing advertisements in the media or along highway billboards.
In 2000, Toyota introduced its hybrid Prius to the U.S. market. Like other gas-electric hybrids made by Toyota and other car makers, the Prius runs on a combination of gasoline engine and electric motor to increase gas mileage and reduce harmful emissions.
The Prius quickly became the top-selling hybrid vehicle on U.S. streets, with nearly 107,000 sold last year alone.
The world's second biggest automaker has introduced other hybrids. Within a few months, American motorists will have a choice of six different hybrid vehicles from Toyota and the Japanese firm's luxury Lexus brand.
Despite its relative dominance in the U.S. market, Toyota sees even greater sales potential for its hybrids by better acquainting consumers with the concept.
Toyota has used other marketing campaigns to put prospective buyers behind the wheel of its vehicles.
But Highway to the Future represents the car company's most ambitious hands-on marketing strategy ever in the United States, both in scope and level of technology used in the displays, Toyota officials say.
"This is bigger and much more extensive than ever," Toyota spokeswoman Cindy Knight said. "We've done other programs where we've done driving experiences, but not with this many stops, this many vehicles and to engage this many people. We've never taken this type of trailer before where we're planning to move so many people through the exhibits."
The Highway to the Futuretrailers are traveling separately -- one covering the western United States and the other handling the country's eastern half. Each trailer is accompanied by three different Toyota hybrids, the Prius, Camry hybrid and Highlander hybrid.
Most hybrids in the United States are bought and driven along the West and East coasts. So the trailers' travels through the country's vast middle could have an especially strong effect on consumers, Toyota officials said.
USC marketing professor David Stewart expects Toyota's campaign to be successful.
"For any relatively new-to-the-world product, I think it's really important to give people firsthand experience," said David Stewart, chairman of the marketing department at USC's Marshall School of Business. "What you really want to do is create familiarity with the product, overcome any misconceptions or objections with the product."
Some of those misconceptions involve questions about hybrids' acceleration and ability to merge into traffic, said Gordon Wangers, a Las Vegas-based automotive consultant.
"In general, the non-car people out there are a little afraid of hybrids," Wangers said. "They think, 'It's good if I'm environmentally responsible, but it's probably slow and it's not for me.' So I think Toyota is wise to take the car out to the hinterlands and explain why hybrids are worth the premium."
Toyota's Highway to the Future resembles "The Pepsi Challenge" on a certain level, Stewart said.
In 1975, soft drink maker PepsiCo launched The Pepsi Challenge, which used taste tests at public venues such as malls to compete for people's taste buds against rival Coca-Cola.
PepsiCo's taste tests spread nationwide, and helped Pepsi to outsell Coca-Cola in many supermarkets and convenience stores.
"It was in a sense designed to achieve the same objective, which was to get people to reconsider their preferences," Stewart said of the Pepsi campaign. "The challenge was to give people an entertaining way to test their preferences. Of course, they got a lot of PR from the media, which looks like what they're going to get with Toyota as well."
Toyota's West Coast trailer debuted Jan. 11 at the San Jose International Auto Show. The trailer and hybrids in tow are making their way through the Northwest.
The East Coast trailer was recently at the Washington Auto Show, and is headed to the Chicago Auto Show later this month.
Visitors to the trailers will be able to interact with digital exhibits on how hybrid vehicles operate, the technology's benefit to the environment and how alternative fuels such as ethanol can help reduce harmful emissions.
Toyota targets some activities specifically to children, who can earn points from different learning stations, with a gift as the final prize.
"We take a long-term view of where the market is going," said Coleman, the advanced technology vehicle manager. "So we know they will be consumers 10, 20 years from now. ... Also they have an influence on what cars their parents drive."
http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/Toyota_Mobile_Hybrid_Experience.jpgMuhammed El-Hasan - Daily Breeze - Feb. 4, 2007
Toyota - Mobile Hybrid Experience Roadshow.
Toyota foresees this scene repeating itself nationwide:
While visiting a state fair with the wife and son, you notice a crowd milling in front of a 53-foot double-expandable trailer with blue sides and awnings.
Your son bolts into the trailer and begins to work the steering wheel of a mock vehicle cockpit in front of a 50-inch monitor.
Your wife enters and peruses a display that indicates between which cities she can drive a low-emission Toyota hybrid vehicle on a single tank of gas.
And you decide to take a test drive in Toyota Motor Corp.'s industry-leading Prius hybrid.
A few months later -- after considering all the options amid some nagging from your son -- you and your wife decide to buy the family's first gas-electric hybrid vehicle. And it's a Toyota.
Last month, Torrance-based Toyota Motor Sales USA, the automaker's U.S. sales and marketing headquarters, launched a nationwide marketing campaign dubbed "Highway to the Future: Mobile Hybrid Experience."
The 18-month campaign involves two identical trailers traveling separately to more than 150 events including state fairs, auto shows, museums, environmental gatherings and other venues.
The campaign is designed to offer consumers a firsthand encounter with automotive hybrid technology through digital exhibits and driving or riding in the vehicles.
"This is a museumlike experience. It's not a sales job," said Doug Coleman, advanced technology vehicle manager for Toyota. "What we're doing is trying to educate people. There's a huge mass of people who don't know about hybrids. They can come away feeling like, 'Hey, this is interesting. I feel that Toyota is trying to educate me without the sales environment.' "
Toyota plans to increasingly take this approach, in addition to the more conventional marketing staple of placing advertisements in the media or along highway billboards.
In 2000, Toyota introduced its hybrid Prius to the U.S. market. Like other gas-electric hybrids made by Toyota and other car makers, the Prius runs on a combination of gasoline engine and electric motor to increase gas mileage and reduce harmful emissions.
The Prius quickly became the top-selling hybrid vehicle on U.S. streets, with nearly 107,000 sold last year alone.
The world's second biggest automaker has introduced other hybrids. Within a few months, American motorists will have a choice of six different hybrid vehicles from Toyota and the Japanese firm's luxury Lexus brand.
Despite its relative dominance in the U.S. market, Toyota sees even greater sales potential for its hybrids by better acquainting consumers with the concept.
Toyota has used other marketing campaigns to put prospective buyers behind the wheel of its vehicles.
But Highway to the Future represents the car company's most ambitious hands-on marketing strategy ever in the United States, both in scope and level of technology used in the displays, Toyota officials say.
"This is bigger and much more extensive than ever," Toyota spokeswoman Cindy Knight said. "We've done other programs where we've done driving experiences, but not with this many stops, this many vehicles and to engage this many people. We've never taken this type of trailer before where we're planning to move so many people through the exhibits."
The Highway to the Futuretrailers are traveling separately -- one covering the western United States and the other handling the country's eastern half. Each trailer is accompanied by three different Toyota hybrids, the Prius, Camry hybrid and Highlander hybrid.
Most hybrids in the United States are bought and driven along the West and East coasts. So the trailers' travels through the country's vast middle could have an especially strong effect on consumers, Toyota officials said.
USC marketing professor David Stewart expects Toyota's campaign to be successful.
"For any relatively new-to-the-world product, I think it's really important to give people firsthand experience," said David Stewart, chairman of the marketing department at USC's Marshall School of Business. "What you really want to do is create familiarity with the product, overcome any misconceptions or objections with the product."
Some of those misconceptions involve questions about hybrids' acceleration and ability to merge into traffic, said Gordon Wangers, a Las Vegas-based automotive consultant.
"In general, the non-car people out there are a little afraid of hybrids," Wangers said. "They think, 'It's good if I'm environmentally responsible, but it's probably slow and it's not for me.' So I think Toyota is wise to take the car out to the hinterlands and explain why hybrids are worth the premium."
Toyota's Highway to the Future resembles "The Pepsi Challenge" on a certain level, Stewart said.
In 1975, soft drink maker PepsiCo launched The Pepsi Challenge, which used taste tests at public venues such as malls to compete for people's taste buds against rival Coca-Cola.
PepsiCo's taste tests spread nationwide, and helped Pepsi to outsell Coca-Cola in many supermarkets and convenience stores.
"It was in a sense designed to achieve the same objective, which was to get people to reconsider their preferences," Stewart said of the Pepsi campaign. "The challenge was to give people an entertaining way to test their preferences. Of course, they got a lot of PR from the media, which looks like what they're going to get with Toyota as well."
Toyota's West Coast trailer debuted Jan. 11 at the San Jose International Auto Show. The trailer and hybrids in tow are making their way through the Northwest.
The East Coast trailer was recently at the Washington Auto Show, and is headed to the Chicago Auto Show later this month.
Visitors to the trailers will be able to interact with digital exhibits on how hybrid vehicles operate, the technology's benefit to the environment and how alternative fuels such as ethanol can help reduce harmful emissions.
Toyota targets some activities specifically to children, who can earn points from different learning stations, with a gift as the final prize.
"We take a long-term view of where the market is going," said Coleman, the advanced technology vehicle manager. "So we know they will be consumers 10, 20 years from now. ... Also they have an influence on what cars their parents drive."