Today I will be talking about a campaign that has got my blood boiling: the Toyota Venza campaign. Here is one of the commercials playing every few minutes on tv and here is the other.
It is perfectly ok to decide to target a specific age group for a product, as Toyota is clearly doing in this campaign. However, you should never (almost never) do it at the expense of another age group. Toyota is clearly making fun of a generation, a pretty large one at that. You can target an age group while still leaving the others the option to buy. This alienates a sector of the market, not just for this one car but for all their products. Why am I going to go buy a car from a company that thinks my generation is a joke. This ad makes me defensive and does not leave me with happy feelings towards Toyota.
My lease is over in a few months and you can be sure that I will not be checking out any Toyotas!
For the big companies out there your overall brand name is more important that just one product. Don't ruin your reputation just to push one car.
