December is a time when US automotive brands flood the market with their respective sales event campaigns as a final end-of-year sales push. Given the competitive landscape, we realized that Hispanics’ feelings of exhaustion from entering another holiday season during a pandemic gave us a unique opportunity to do something much more meaningful: establish a stronger connection between Hispanics, Toyota, and the wider community. Toyota has continued to raise the bar among the competition by creating a legacy of heartfelt holiday ads for Toyotathon that cut through the clutter. This year, the strategy centered around a core Hispanic cultural truth: when you pour your time, love, energy, and focus into others, the good that you create comes back to you tenfold.

“Nora’s Joy” leaned into long-anticipated moments of togetherness, with an objective of building brand affinity by sharing joy and giving back to a charity during the holiday season.

During the 2021 holiday season, the need to reconnect was much more essential than ever as the second year of the pandemic raged on. Hispanics in the US were feeling especially burnt out as many remained active in frontline industries.

"Nora's Joy" tells the story of a shy young woman who has the magical ability to capture her emotions in something completely unexpected-mason jars. On Christmas Eve, after witnessing her neighbors and their loved ones come together, she realizes she can no longer hold back all the beautiful feelings she had kept locked away over the years. In a brave move, she loads them onto the bed of her Toyota Tacoma. She then drives through town, literally releasing her feelings, spreading her joy with those around her in a magical flurry of colors that light up the night sky.

While the campaign themes of joy and togetherness would resonate well with our Latino audience in the U.S., a more extensive ecosystem was needed to optimize engagement and inspire conversation. The underpinning of the PR effort was literally to bring our animated character, Nora, and her message of “share the joy” to life.

With a holiday media buy already negotiated with Telemundo, a plan was developed to organically extend the campaign message across a variety of the network’s properties. Special footage of Nora was created during production for this purpose.

A philanthropic tie-in with the Hispanic Scholarship Fund (HSF) was created as a way for our audience to engage with Nora’s message and give back to the community. A social media activation served as the mechanism for doing this. A digital facsimile of Nora’s “Joy Jar” was created. Each jar shared resulted in a donation to HSF by Toyota.

The campaign kicked off with engaging prime placements. Digital video was a key element- given increased video consumption during the holidays and the pandemic-delivering over 11MM premium targeted video impressions (in just ten days) to complement the light linear viewer and drive awareness and engagement. Leading sites included Pandora, Hulu, YouTube, People en Español, Peacock, and Prende TV. YouTube Masthead prime real estate was leveraged for high-impact exposure.

25MM+ video impressions were delivered across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest to capitalize on target’s high social usage, drive reach, and encourage shares. Strategic targeting included a combination of first-party data, holiday themes and charity keywords to support HSF. Video retargeting played a key role in campaign success as it further encouraged and reminded users to #ShareTheJoy. Content was also published on organic brand channels, influencer and media partner channels, contributing to 2.6K shares resulting in a donation.

National media set the tone for a high-profile PR campaign. The extensive integration on popular morning and entertainment shows on a leading Spanish Language broadcaster to bring Nora to life paid terrific dividends. Coverage was overwhelmingly positive across all media, which included broadcast and online outlets (consumer and trade).

Targeted outreach to trade, local, and national media, and through Toyota’s online newsroom, resulted in over 74MM impressions.

Content produced across Telemundo’s broadcast and social properties garnered 13.2MM impressions, 1.7MM engagements and 4.7MM views.

The combined value of earned media on Telemundo properties increased the value of Toyota’s overall media investment by $1.2 million.

The Social activation delivered 1.8K Joy Jar shares, resulting in a $50,000 donation by Toyota to the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, in support of student scholars.

In the spirit of Nora, local Toyota teams spread the joy by creating a Toyota “Joy Mobile” that delivered donation checks and physical Joy Jars during the holiday season, which resulted in additional local media attention in Indiana and Alabama.