Toyota “Swagger Wagon” Rap – Just Awesome

Posted on 06. Feb, 2011 by Martin Biela in Digital Campaign

Ok this one isn’t the newest one, but it has to be part of autofspace. Toyota hit its first “home run” with their Swagger Wagon music video featuring “The Sienna Family”. So where did Toyota go right with the “Swagger Wagon” project? The brilliant minds behind this clever campaign actually belong to the Los Angeles-based marketing company Saatchi & Saatchi LA. They teamed up with comedy director Jody Hill to create this creative series of online video. With over 8.000.000 views it’s one of the biggest success automotive viral campaign stories on YouTube. The video has also generated 1787 comments. And the comments range from “Can I get a swagga wagon sign for my sienna?” to “Terrible”. The official “Musicvideo”looks like this …

The term “swagger wagon” was first mentioned in a previous marketing video that took a satirical look at parenthood and how the Toyota Sienna minivan fit into their lives.

What is also very interesting, that the Toyota Swagger Wagon campaign doesn’t have a normal Camapgin Microsite. The complete campaign is taking part on a branded channel on YouTube. For me an indicator that future campaigns will go more and more into video channels, mobile devices and social media sites like facebook. It’s not the end of the Campaign Microsite, but it doesn’t have to be on the clients shopping list for online campaigns anymore, when it’s not needed. So the quote from Mark Pylik is getting more and more real:

Traditional microsites we do them all the time, but it’s easy to take for granted, because It’s always gonna be there and if it’s always gonna be there and you take it for granted, you might never gonna look at it

Like in the Old Spice campaign, there are lot of funny Just for You -Videos, in which users ask via YouTube comments question to the Swagger parents.

They also used Daddy Swagger as a moderator for motorshow videos. In this he is promoting the Swagger Wagon Supreme.

4 specific reasons that have made Toyota’s “Swagger Wagon” campaign a complete success from drivinmedia.com:

1. Emotion Creates Motion-

Emotion sells. Whether it’s comedy, sadness, anger or love; emotion creates a bond between the viewer and the video. Using trendy music mixed with comedy allowed Toyota to create the perfect marketing tool, allowing people to feel emotion. This created an attachment to the videos, ensuring that people would watch them over and over again.

2. Eyes on the Prize-

Toyota used a source that they already knew had traffic- their very own site. By traffic that they already had coming to their site, Toyota was able to spread the news about the video in a faster, more efficient way.

3. Entertain & Educate-

One thing you’ll notice in Toyota’s video series is that in every video you watch, you learn something new about the van. Whether it’s styling, versatility, available entertainment or spaciousness; Toyota was able to deliver entertaining videos, each of which is filled with selling points for the minivans. When viewers began spreading the videos throughout the web, they helped Toyota get the selling process firmly underway.

4. Caring is Sharing-

Because Toyota decided to share these videos via a mini site on YouTube, it allowed people to share the content across many online media platforms. Here is where they were shared the most:

1. Facebook: 199,287 shares
2. Twitter: 4,584 tweets
3. Blogs: 687 blog posts (plus one more to include this post)
4. YouTube: 2,770,608 views (including 1,066 comments)

Tags: branded channel, Toyota, Viral, youtube