Agency: Dashboard Communications
Project Role: Lead Art Direction, Direct Mail Design, Campaign Look and Feel, City Map Planning and Storyboards, Project Management
Awards/Recognition: FWA Public Shortlist
The result of nearly 8 months of work; the Toyota Drive In Another Dimension campaign was my last project developed while at Dashboard and my proudest project – a result of tireless work from the OTDA Account team, programming department and creative department as well as all our 3rd party vendors. The project was an exercise in visual, audio and interactive excess. Part of a direct mail campaign and a website for the Ontario Toyota Dealers focused on promoting coupons for lapsed and existing Toyota owners. With a print run of over a quarter million for the direct mail piece and over 400,000 branded 3D glasses it was one of the largest projects I’ve ever lead. The additional glasses were sent to Ontario’s 78 Toyota Dealerships to have on hand when customers visit over the promotional period. The direct mail piece was a parts and service focused folded print piece designed for viewing in traditional stereoscopic 3D with the attached branded 3D glasses (so people would look at it and keep it).
The piece pushed users to the site which was developed in both 2D CGI and stereoscopic 3D CGI and featured an aerial perspective city users could drive through in search of offers. Attached to each offer we developed narrated, demonstrative videos focused on showing users what the offer entailed and the benefits to getting the service. Part of the OTDA’s Parts and Service ongoing mission to bring brand and information to customers alongside retail offers. Once users collected the offers they could drive to the dealership to finish the game and redeem their coupons. While at the dealership they could also share their time, retry or chose to cruise the city with no timer. For those who wanted to continue driving we threw in Easter eggs like Toyota messaging on billboards, the ability to change your car’s colour, horns and full environmental audio effects, brake marks when at high speed and the ability to drive off road finding shortcuts.
During our QA development we handed out glasses to the entire company and asked them to test the site in a companywide QA session. And due to excitement from the OTDA board we had the opportunity to present it directly to a boardroom of Toyota Canada International employees at their Toronto offices. Some of the best comments we heard during launch and shortly after included people receiving the direct mail piece and having their children pull them to their computer to play and see the site in 3D, high site traffic (numbers to come) and people saying it was challenging but highly addictive.
