ABOUT

Background

Like most markets around the world, Toyota Australia has spent decades establishing the brand credentials of quality, reliability and durability. Which has been responsible for solidifying Toyota as the county’s number one most trusted car brand. However, this has also led to the brand being labelled as safe and somewhat vanilla. These types of associations have only weakened the brand’s fashionable credentials in Australia, seeing it commonly referred to as your grandma’s car.

So when you release a brand new premium model, the Toyota C-HR, with a high-end, luxury interior and an ultra-sleek exterior design inspired by the shape, angles and geometric lines of a diamond, you have a daunting task ahead convincing consumers of your fashion and luxury credentials.

As with all things in the world of high fashion and luxury – it’s less about what you say, and more about how you show up. So we needed to prove to our highly-discerning audience that we move in the same circles.

As our intended target audience tends to engage with those brands, products and designers on the fringe, launching the latest trends with one-of-a-kind collabs, we created the most exclusive designer collection for a luxury car - a jewellery collection featuring diamonds made from the car itself.

We hijacked the biggest red carpet gala in Australia, watched by more Australians than the Academy Awards - The Brownlow Medal - we snuck the new C-HR onto the red carpet, as it was worn by high-end celebrity attendees.

Idea

The new Toyota C-HR, aimed at a fashion-savvy audience, has a distinct feature - its design is inspired by a diamond. So we turned the car into a diamond, creating an exclusive jewellery range with Australia’s hottest designer, Millie Savage.


A 2-minute film teased the collaboration between Toyota and Millie Savage. The collaboration would see an exclusive one-off collection launch in 2024. It wasn’t until the biggest celebrity event of the year, The Brownlow Medal, where Australia’s biggest film, sports and television stars attend, that we reveal the collection during a live TV event hijack.


The collection was then promoted through outdoor posters, social influencers and an online campaign. Directing the public to a campaign hub to learn about unexpected origins of the collection, purchase the items and could place themselves on the waiting list to secure the ultimate four-wheel fashion statement - the new C-HR.

Strategy

The challenge was to show that we belong. Our discerning audience moves in certain circles and expects the brands they associate with to show up where traditional automotive media does not. So how could the CH-R be more Dolce & Gabbana? More red carpet and less run-out sale?


For this particular model, it was time to flip their normal comms strategy and find a way to capture the attention of fashion mags and fashionable influencers. We didn’t promote the car at all, instead we launched a fashion jewellery range with one of the nation’s most sought-after designers. As a mainstream brand ourselves, we purposely looked for a young solo designer who was only recently established, again in a bid to add authentic fashion credibility to the campaign and the car. Every element and touchpoint was treated like a fashion brand.

Description

The Toyota brand is known for quality and reliability, but not for style and luxury. The all-new Toyota C-HR embodies both, so we needed to convince a younger, fashion-savvy demographic of the brand’s new-found luxury credentials.

Over a 12-month process, parts of the Toyota C-HR were analysed, incinerated into carbon, supplied to a lab-growing diamond company and then handed over to cutting-edge jewellery designer Millie Savage. We then behaved like a fashion brand in every campaign touchpoint.

It all culminated in a launch event no one saw coming. During the biggest red carpet gala in Australia, watched by more Australians than the Academy Awards - The Brownlow Medal - we snuck the new C-HR onto the red carpet, as it was worn by high-end celebrity attendees. And as they were revealed to the press interviewing the celebrities on national TV, it was a stunt that got the whole country talking.

Execution

Teasers were released in the lead-up to the launch that promised an unexpected collaboration between jewellery designer Millie Savage and car brand Toyota.

The hijacking of a live televised event formed the official campaign launch which was followed by the release of the behind scenes of the red carpet as our celebrity talent readied for the gala event. Shared through their social media, it was picked up by the news media and featured in hundreds of red carpet stories on air, in the press and on online fashion and sporting sites. Millie Savage also promoted the C-HR collection release across all her personal and professional social platforms to her existing fan base of hundreds of thousands.

The designer co-lab between Millie Savage and Toyota was promoted through a national street poster campaign and an online film, as well as at all Millie Savage store locations.

Outcome

The tactical hijack of Australia’s biggest sporting gala, reached over 3M Aussies (11% of the Australian population). That figure increased dramatically through PR and across social, online, generating $42M in earned media. And we showed up where it mattered: with the total campaign media impression reaching over 242M, in Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, Esquire, GQ, The Daily Mail (AUS & UK).

On the evening of the broadcast website visits reached unprecedented levels with the highest numbers of traffic (+4000%) to the Toyota Australia site and the largest unprompted brand searches in a single day - even creating the top Google search term ‘C-HR Diamond Collection’. This translated into over 10k registrations (the highest ever for an Australian car launch) for the new CH-R exceeding pre-sale targets by 1000%.

All 14 pieces ($3000 to 15,000) sold out within three weeks. Making it Millie Savage’s fastest-selling collection and Toyota Australia’s best PR campaign ever.