As Toyota was set to launch the all-new, most powerful Tacoma ever, the competition was chasing its legendary status as the favorite of adventurous thrill-seekers. Our objective was to appeal to new and loyal mid-size pick up buyers who are increasingly younger & more diverse, with an emphasis on awareness and opinion. The brief: Get spontaneous adventurers, driven by their never-ending pursuit of the next level, to rally around Tacoma as their co-conspirator. With an outreach as large as the internet and a budget as small as a heavily used truck, we managed to hit Tacoma lovers right where it counts with our custom-made, one-of-a-kind grab handles - at the intersection of “Awesome!” and “Oh, shit!”

Because Toyota trucks are favored by the adventurous, and Tacoma in particular by those with extreme pursuits – off-roading, dirt biking, dune jumping, anything-fast-and-scary-ing - we focused our entire campaign around the thing you use most when things get extreme in a truck, the grab handle, aka The “Oh Shit” Handle. After our Super Bowl launch spot aired, we turned to social to ask our thrill-seeking audience “What would you name the handle?” Then, we hired a designer to make custom, one-of-a-kind grab handles with peoples’ responses on them. But we didn’t hire just any designer. We hired the perfect designer, legendary extreme artist and skateboard designer, Thomas Fernandez. By surprising Tacoma fans with something we knew they would lose their minds over, we created the most thrilling, extreme grab handles the extreme thrill-seeking truck world has ever known.

Each of our pieces were one-of-a-kind, customed-designed, original works of art. Renowned extreme artist and skateboard designer, Thomas Fernandez, integrated the individual social responses into every part of each unique piece – theme, content, style, color palette and typography. Sketches were refined, then final designs created and implemented, by hand, by Fernandez himself, adding an additional layer of bespoke personality intended to connect even more directly with our audience. Pieces were specifically designed to be executed on genuine Toyota grab handles, not only to follow the overall grab handle campaign direction, but also so they could be installed and displayed in their natural environment – in a Tacoma doing something extreme enough to require their use.

The work made a statistically significant positive impact across the measured metrics including: Tacoma opinion, Tacoma consideration, Toyota brand buzz, Tacoma buzz, Tacoma affinity and imagery. As a result, traffic to the Tacoma page on Toyota.com increased by 91%. Tacoma participation in the Super Bowl garnered above average (2.5x) search interest when compared to all Super Bowl advertisers.

Brand Perception: The work 1) garnered positive reactions on social channels as people related the executions to their own real-life driving experiences, 2)over-indexed in ‘appeal’ compared to other advertisers, due to its playful humor and relatability.

Value Added to the Brand: PR coverage, spanning publications such as Variety, Automotive News, AdWeek, and Autoevolution, massed 1.2B total PR impressions, the equivalent of $7.2M.