Toyota - Striving to be the Gamer’s Choice, but Others are in the Rearview Mirror

Recently, Toyota aired a commercial for the Toyota Tacoma during an SEC College Football Game (between LSU and Florida) which parodies one of the better known Internet memes (”Leeroy Jenkins”) in World of Warcraft. In addition, Toyota will be releasing a free Xbox Live Arcade game on October 10th in which players can drive around a Toyota Yaris and “drive it on crazy tracks loaded with stubborn obstacles, cool powerups, and intense enemy action.” This is not Toyota’s first foray into online gaming, as it has been peddling Scions online in Second Life an Whyville.

What is interesting about these latest attempts are the budgets required to implement them.  Clearly, working with Blizzard to get the World of Warcraft elements and purchasing the advertising time during a major college football game did not come cheap.  In addition, creating a free downloadable game for Xbox Live required a financial commitment as well.  It is apparent that Toyota is priming the pump for the next generation of car buyers and attempting to create goodwill and positive brand image and associations with their products.  After all, it is the Yaris that is being featured in the Xbox Live Arcade game, not the Camry or Avalon.  

As innovative and new as this may seem now, brands have attempted this in the past.  Back in the days of the Atari 2600, we had the Pepsi Invaders and Kool-Aid Man games in 1983.  For the NES, we had the Yo! Noid (Domino’s Pizza), Spot (7-UP), and M.C. Kids (McDonald’s) games.  The main difference here is that we as consumers had to pay full retail prices for these advergames.  Today. the new games being released are either free or have minimal cost - look at Burger King’s Xbox/Xbox 360 games from last year.   The hopes for the advertisers are that if they produce games that are halfway decent and enjoyable, this will translate into positive brand experiences for the consumers and that will impact their purchasing behaviors in the future.

This is just the beginning and we’ll see more and more advergaming.  It’s already happening - Burger King just signed a deal with Mobliss to create mobile games for cell phones.