To successfully engage with Redditors in an unfiltered, authentic way, we wanted to give them an outlet to channel their creativity and wit by prompting them with questions that didn’t feel anything like advertising – without causing a backlash against the brand.

The resulting engagement was overwhelmingly positive. Not only did this usually hostile audience not immediately rip Toyota to shreds, thousands eagerly spent time interacting with the brand.

The campaign extended the video content on a social platform Toyota had never utilized before and gave the audience a compelling reason to engage with the brand. For example, in one execution, we asked Redditors to tell us what they would name the first colony on Mars. Then we surprised them by responding with customized memes tailored to their answers in near-real time. In another, we challenged them to tell us a joke that would make a lumberjack laugh, then selected the best responses and awarded them with the most outrageous lumberjack items we could find on the internet.

The campaign brought together brand video content, consumer engagement and real-time social responses in a platform-authentic way. It proved that, as an organization, we understood not only the nature of the platform, but also the audience we were targeting.

The campaign received a 14 point lift in ad recall and a 7 point lift in message association. To prove lower funnel metrics, following the test we launched a Sales Matchback study measuring sales for the 30 and 60 days beyond the campaign to see what happens. The strong performance of the RAV4 Hybrid campaign appeared to be the catalyst for driving a statistically significant 2.3% lift in Toyota buyers equating to 1,695 incremental sales.

Brand favorability saw a 6.4x lift compared to automotive norms according to a Millward Brown study; purchase intent received a 3.4x lift compared with automotive norms; and the campaign’s posts on Reddit received 60x more Upvotes than the average for organic posts. The campaign proved to be one of the most success brand campaigns ever on Reddit.