Toyota has a history of supporting soccer in the Hispanic market—from World Cups to Gold Cups. The all-new Tundra, Toyota’s full-size pickup truck, wanted to leverage this to infuse itself into Latino communities in a credible, meaningful way. It needed to complement its launch campaign, “Born to Empower,” which showcased how the truck’s unstoppable capability is always there to help its driver and its community.

Leverage Tundra’s unstoppable capability to become Latinos’ partner in elevating their community.

The campaign aimed to utilize the premium Gold Cup property to drive consideration and imagery lifts for the all-new Tundra.

• Media Insight

Hispanics’ love of soccer reigns above all, with 75% identifying as fans of the sport, which delivers a mostly exclusive audience. Premium soccer tournaments deliver the strongest reach and viewership among Hispanic truck intenders. The soccer environment strongly lends itself to boosting powerful imagery of Toyota Trucks across all platforms.

Tundra would show that it is so committed to supporting the target and the Latino community that it actively fuels their small businesses’ growth. Towing Sponsors brought Latino-owned small businesses to the grandest stage in soccer, providing them with an unprecedented media platform. The idea took twenty local brands to 34 Gold Cup matches across 15 cities in the U.S. during the 22 days of the tournament. How exactly did the brands get there? Tundra’s unstoppable capability literally towed huge, branded signs for each business across LED billboards and jumbotrons in each stadium, as well as on social media by Concacaf and Toyota. Additionally, the small businesses were showcased in pop-up stores at the Fan Fest, allowing them to promote and sell their products. This effort granted the businesses nationwide visibility and recognition while giving Tundra the credit for elevating their communities in an impactful way.

Capitalize on a premium sports moment and the consumer behavior around live sports to drive opinion and consideration for the all-new Tundra. A robust communications plan was developed that delivered key consumer touch points with messaging endemic to each.

This was accomplished by securing premium inventory in all 32 live matches running on Univision’s broadcast network and streaming platform. In addition, the brand was aligned with ancillary sports programming and custom segments within. On-site activation and influencers were leveraged to secure relevant and social-forward content, boosted across platforms with significant Hispanic soccer fan reach. All media was hyper-targeted and applied through data audiences to reach soccer fans, influencer fans, and Tundra Legacy Makers’ interests. As many members of the target are small business owners, the Gold Cup represented a unique opportunity to show how Tundra supports them and their businesses in a big way.

The Towing Sponsor idea took twenty local brands to 34 Gold Cup matches across 15 cities in the U.S. during the 22 days of the tournament. Their brands were advertised on LED billboards and jumbotrons in each stadium, as well as on social media by Concacaf and Toyota. Additionally, they were showcased in pop-up stores at the fan fest, allowing small businesses to promote and sell their products. This unprecedented PR effort and scale in soccer reached over 80 million viewers for their brands, all made possible by the Tundra, responsible for towing these small local businesses to the biggest soccer tournament in Central and North America.

The campaign struck gold, delivering a total of 637.4 million impressions across a multi-tiered media approach (broadcast, digital, social), tactical use of relatable influencer-curated content posts, on-site executions in key markets surrounding the biggest matches of the tournament, and a robust national and regional PR multi-prong approach.

Brand lift associating Toyota (brand) and Toyota Tundra (model) were reported to have the strongest advertiser recognition among auto category and truck competitors. And Toyota received double-digit increases in key brand metrics from Gold Cup Linear TV+Streaming viewers. Imagery metrics also delivered powerful results with a jump of +11 points, with Tundra being seen as “Unstoppable” and “Rugged/Tough.” Additionally, brand consideration garnered a significant +70% growth among participants who visited the on-site activation.

All in all, Toyota surpassed all previous metrics versus previous Gold Cup tournament sponsorships while elevating the community and supporting local businesses.