We needed to drive credibility, desirability, and consideration for Toyota’s first performance car in more than 20 years, the all-new GR Yaris. By leveraging the motorsport narrative behind the Toyota Gazoo Racing brand, there was an opportunity to demonstrate GR’s credibility, authenticity, and exhilaration through a thrilling driving concept at launch.
Working with Australian Rally Champion Harry Bates and Dr Jemma King, a human behaviour expert, a series of physical and psychometric tests were developed to uncover the traits behind the world’s best racing drivers. ‘The Racing Gene’ was born.
The ‘Racing Gene’ experiment gave us three-key aspirations to build an exciting launch event around.
Racing spirit.
Fresh thinking.
Serious fun.
Before kicking off media activity, a hero film was developed that introduced the idea of The Racing Gene and would later be used on Toyota’s owned social channels and media launch event. We then put Connectors, Motoring Media and Lifestyle Media to the test.
We took over Sutton Road Driver Training Centre with Neal Bates Motorsport and Rick Bates Advanced Driving. Starting off with the hero film, we introduced our experts and the GR family narrative. Guests were able to experience track laps with professional drivers, motorkhana activities and The Racing Gene tests set up with Dr Jemma King. At the end of the day, we presented the final score sheet to guests to see who had the traits of a racing driver.
- 150 pieces of coverage
- 341,185,616 cumulative reach across Motoring and Lifestyle media
- 1,073,500 total social reach across owned and connector channels
- Demand for the vehicle has massively outstripped supply. Toyota temporarily halted taking orders (from July 1).
