Find Your Drive was a social initiative that represented a different approach to automotive marketing.

Whilst most auto advertisers are obsessed with how to get bums on seats, steal market share, and get more drivers “enquiring now”, this would be the first time that we strategically sought to get non-drivers into the Toyota brand.

Find Your Drive was run as a 3-month pilot program, to see if we could help four people who had struggled to get their licences, due to driver anxiety, onto the road and into Toyotas. And in doing so, create a new way of empowering people.

Without the ability to sell cars as freely as we had in the past, Toyota sought to increase brand metrics in non-conventional ways.

The brief came off the back of the launch of the Corolla Cross - a new model full of technology available in a Toyota, but that would inevitably sell out in a month. As such we looked for activations and extensions that instead of merely selling metal, were designed to raise the connection and meaningfulness of the Toyota brand. Primarily this was to be achieved through increasing the crucial ‘trust’ metric, which had been flagging due to stock issues and frustration around wait times.

Trust was a composite metric defined by Kantar, made up of innovation, authenticity and ethics/community pillars. As such we sought to shift metrics across the trust spectrum such as ‘does things for the community’, and ‘helping/changing the world for the better’.

Nearly 1.5 million Australian adults don’t have their drivers licence. This can be a byproduct of language barriers, disability, past accidents and other life circumstances which all result in doubt and anxiety. However, not having the freedom to drive in Australia can significantly hold individuals back from life - from gainful employment, physically connecting with family and friends and in regional areas can be geographically isolated and potentially life-threatening.

Unless you live in Australia, you really don’t understand how crucial having a car is. With more landmass than continental Europe, and 900,000km of connected roads, as well as significant suburban and regional sprawl, 70% of Australians say that they couldn’t live without a car. Cars are the ultimate enabler of mobility in Australia.

Australia is currently in a unique situation where due to stock difficulties, supply chain issues and chip shortages, wait times for new vehicles can run into many months if not years for popular models. These circumstances have led to the need for new approaches to increasing our brand health, provide continuous engagement with potential customers and increasing consideration.

Find Your Drive builds on Toyota’s purpose of “Mobility For All”, an act that helps build salience and positive sentiment while also tapping into the 1.5 million people without a driver's licence who could potentially become 1.5 million new customers in the future.

It had been a long time since Toyota activated in a purely purpose-driven way.

“Mobility for all” forces you to think about the people who struggle to achieve mobility. Previously Toyota had connected people in remote communities, those who had disabilities and those who drove in unsafe ways, but we hadn’t ever sought out people that couldn’t get their licence, for reasons of anxiety, personal trauma or life difficulty.

The strategic brief for the Corolla Cross was “helps you move through life smoothly”, built off the product truth that the technology in the car was so smart, it could give you the confidence to tackle any obstacle in your life.

We believed that this created a genuinely unique way of activating “Mobility for All” - one that could raise Toyota’s brand health, and help us activate in areas where people needed confidence to tackle obstacles in their lives.

In the brief for the Corolla Cross launch there was a line that simply said “this car is so smart it could even give my partner confidence to drive”. The partner in question was the planner’s 30 year old girlfriend who still didn’t have her licence due to anxiety from when she tried to learn as a teenager.

This provided an interesting breakthrough moment for a potential activation - how many people actually in Australia were also suffering from this very same affliction, that we could potentially help? The answer - millions, over 1.5 Million according to the Australian Bureau of statistics.

When we discovered the sheer volume of people suffering from this condition - fear of driving, amaxophobia - caused by trauma, anxiety or life circumstance, we felt like there was a meaningful job to be done, and found a way we could activate “Mobilty for All” in a

Find Your Drive is a program that offers a new model over traditional driving schools, developed by experts and now tested on four adults, filmed over a three-month period. The approach consisted of three parts: Initial counselling sessions helped overcome mental barriers, VR road driving simulations built up the confidence to get behind the wheel and specialised driving instructors who provided extra support while on the road.

A 3-part content series was released allowing the Australian public to follow each stage of their journey, culminating in their driving tests, which they all passed. Launched with an integrated campaign consisting of OOH, a national radio partnership, TV trailers on streaming services, and digital display, we drove the public to an online hub with in-depth resources and contacts for professionals so they could customise their program, to help them Find Their Drive.

Find Your Drive changed the lives of the four adult drivers who took part in the pilot program, helping them all obtain their drivers licence and achieve the freedom of mobility but their success provides inspiration for 1.5million other non-drivers.

The media launch generated a 3369% increase in traffic to the “Mobility For All” section of the Toyota website with 450+ new non-drivers signing up to the follow-up program.

With this success, we’re now exploring extending the pilot program to accredited driving schools to adopt the approach and have Find Your Drive as an official offering and accreditation for all.

21.5M media reach, reaching 77% of all Australians.

The campaign also contributed to Toyota becoming:

The #8 most trusted brand in Australia (up 2%)

The #8 brand that ‘helps its local communities’ - up from #11

The #5 brand ‘changing the world for the better’ - up from #7