Toyota FJ: Top To Bottom – Timothy Greig

Proximity Wellington, Toyota New Zealand, 2011

Toyota wanted to celebrate the Land Cruiser’s 60 year anniversary as a legendary kiwi icon, and launch a brand new Land Cruiser – the ‘FJ’.

We decided to take the FJ for an epic test drive – from the top to the bottom of New Zealand – proving its off-road credentials and taking kiwis along for a “legendary journey” through seldom-seen parts of our beautiful country.

As a central component of this campaign, we created a microsite that empowered our online audience to help Marc Ellis (our celebrity driver) with route suggestions and off-roading tips.

Top To Bottom (photo by Juan Mon) — What’s the route? No idea. Marc is going to have to make it up as he goes along. Using instinct, a bit of luck and a trusty support crew… which would be you.

My involvement

As my first digital advertising campaign this was certainly a wild ride, but it was awesome fun!

I wireframed the central ‘hub’ microsite for the campaign.
I designed and documented the distribution and flow of content across the multiple social media channels used throughout the campaign.
When it all went live, I was responsible for the hands-on management of these online channels.
I clocked 19+ hour days for the duration of the 19 day campaign, often staying up till 2 or 3 in the morning working with the off-road crew to make sure that all content was loaded for the next morning’s update.

Wireframes for "the hub" the microsite which brought together all the campaign content and tracked the FJ's progress on a map of New Zealand. — Wireframes for “the hub” the microsite which brought together all the campaign content and tracked the FJ’s progress on a map of New Zealand.

Documenting and explaining how all the campaign components fit together and would be created through the co-operation and coordination of the crew on the road and the team back at HQ. This was a big job!

Results

The campaign was wonderfully popular. People liked to really explore Marc’s journey on the ‘hub’ website, and time-on-site was almost 10 minutes on average. By the end of the campaign 5,121 people had helped Marc Ellis with advice and challenges for his journey.

We found Facebook was where we really interacted the most with FJ fans. We earned over 9,000 fans – and this was Toyota’s first foray into social media! On our most popular day we had 8,568 engaged users on Facebook.

Awesome campaign moments

The impromptu convoy of over 100 Land Cruisers that joined Marc to drive off-road to Dunedin.
Convincing Marc to detour to go and buy a Swandri and hat from Haddads Menswear in Otorohanga because a Facebook fan had suggested it.
Travelling to Invercargill for the finale, to see Marc and rest of the FJ Top To Bottom crew finally make it home – very bedraggled and dirty.

Awards

We won 10 awards for our work on this project, including 2 AXIS Golds and a Bronze Lion at Cannes.

2012 AXIS Awards

Gold – Digital & Interactive: Social
Gold – PR/Experiential
Silver – Websites
Bronze – Branded Content
Bronze – Digital/Interactive Campaign

2011 John Caples Awards

Silver – Launch Campaign
Silver – Microsite
Silver – Interactive Campaign

2011 RSVP Awards

Silver – Customer Engagement

2012 Cannes Lions

Bronze Lion – Social Media