Toyota vehicles travel 99.9% of the world’s streets daily, affording the brand the unique position to witness street culture. And, Toyota has always been about and for real people. Feeling The Street provided Toyota the opportunity to engage 18-44 year olds through the only truly global language – music – with an online talent search enabling street musicians exposure to a worldwide audience. The final band of six won the ultimate road trip accompanied by six winners (‘roadies’) from the voting audience and played live and recorded two original songs.

When Feeling the Street launched, musicians entered by uploading video of themselves performing on the street. Within 9weeks, musicians from 49 countries had connected with the campaign. The public voted for their favorites and chose the top 40. In the second phase, the most popular six musicians were picked by the public. They were then flown, along with six online voters, to go on an all-expenses-paid road trip and perform in New Zealand. Throughout all phases, we created video content for the site and for social media. Paid media and content strategies got us traction on social media from day one and until the end of the campaign.

Feeling the Street’s video views exceeded 38 million. We received more than 88 million post impressions and over 86 thousand page likes on Facebook. Seventy percent of the visitors to feelingthestreet.com were between 18 and 44, as were 97 percent of the Facebook fans. The Global Street Band created two original songs that were so good we extended the road trip and recorded them. Members of the Global Street Band have gone on to collaborate together in their native countries and have had television and other media coverage.