I’m actually a really big fan of how Toyota handled its “Tundra Stops on a Dime” advertisement this game. Considering the silliness of some of the other commercials in Toyota’s stable of ads for its trucks, such as this one featuring the Loch Ness Monster spitting out a Tundra, you wouldn’t think they would do something quite so truly product-savvy.
While that ad campaign features meteors hitting the truck and it surviving, among other things, this one did use some obnoxious behavior, but in a well-done way that showed the truck handling a serious bit of acceleration, not being squashed in a pair of giant closing doors and then stopping before falling into a canyon. Note: “Actual Demonstration” in the first two seconds of the ad. Aside from the fact that I had bad memories of the giant walls that closed to separate my high school gym into two gyms from one giant one, I thought it was pretty slick.
I’m also imagining that that spot would have looked absolutely awesome in high definition on a giant screen.
So while Chevrolet has tried to focus on the people and quality behind its products so far, and Ford has given us feature and product-specific info on its F-Series trucks, Toyota has done a little bit of quality and feature, while adding in some Hollywood fun to improve on the whole thing. It’s not enough that Toyota is getting huge as far as autos sold in the U.S. and will be part of the Nextel Cup Series in NASCAR this season after a few years on the Craftsman Truck circuit, but now they’re making serious headway into the advertising ballgame as well.
