To launch the all-new Prius, our commercial told the story of bandits who lead authorities on an endless getaway in a new Prius. Along the way, their improbable escape becomes a popular movement as people across the country cheer them on. Immediately after the spot aired, we invited the Super Bowl audience into the story with an invitation on social media: tweet your support for the bandits with the hash tag #GoPriusGo and your message could appear in our second game day spot, seen by tens of millions of people. Suddenly, the movement became real. Thousands of people tweeted their support for the “Prius Four,” and when the second spot aired, it featured some of the user-submitted messages on homemade signs along the bandits’ escape route.

A massive, real-time Super Bowl stunt linking broadcast and social media would require meticulous planning and flawless execution, and involve the coordination of scores of moderators, agency personnel, network executives and legal teams across five war rooms in three cities. Here’s how it went down: As the commercial aired just before half time, social media teams announced the stunt on Twitter. Moderators then vetted all the submissions, sending along a few dozen sanctioned tweets to agency, client and legal personnel for further approval. Final selected tweets were delivered to an illustrator to turn them into “handmade” sign visuals. The visuals were then input into the second commercial by a third-party dynamic video vendor, approved by all parties, and broadcast shortly after in front of tens of millions of people.

We not only achieved our objective of sparking online chatter, we ran away with a substantial share of voice during the game.

The stunt helped Prius trend on Twitter during the Super Bowl, one of just two auto brands to do so.

Toyota gained the largest gain in share of conversation among auto advertisers.

Contributed to a 304% increase in visits to the Prius model landing page on Toyota.com.

Helped Toyota rank #1 in Google searches among non-luxury car models both on game day and after.