MANILA: Ace/Saatchi & Saatchi has lost the Toyota Corolla branding
business to Dentsu associate Image Dimensions as the automaker attempts
to freshen up its staid image to take on market leader Honda Motors.
Image Dimensions first snatched pieces of the account off Ace/Saatchi
last year, taking the briefs for the Tamaraw and FX Revo, Toyota's
mid-range and upper-end Asian utility vehicle brands.
The loss of the passenger car brand is a new blow for Ace/Saatchi, which
has handled the Toyota account since the '80s. It now leaves the agency
with Toyota's corporate business and the Hilux pick-up and Prado sports
utility brands.
The agency switch was made just as Toyota began rolling out a new
campaign for its Corolla Altis brand, fronted by American actor Brad
Pitt, and developed by Dentsu Japan. The Philippines is the third
Southeast Asian country to air the Pitt campaign after Taiwan and
Thailand. Toyota will be spending US$500,000 initially to promote
the re-modelled Corolla in the Philippines.
Toyota marketing and PR manager, Ariel de Jesus, said: "There's a good
possibility that we may hire Saatchi again but at the moment, we're
content with Image Dimensions."
Toyota is having a hard time breaking Honda's hold as top passenger car
seller in the country and it is hoping that the Pitt campaign will
spruce up its conservative image as "the car for dad". De Jesus said
Corolla's image as a practical choice had worked against it. "What we
want now is to reinforce the image that Toyota is a stylish car," he
said, adding that the younger consumer segment was growing, but the
Corolla was not an obvious first choice.
Toyota Philippines president Takeshi Fukuda said the car maker was
looking to knock Honda from its pole position in the passenger car
segment. But he acknowledged that this would be a difficult task with
the economy slowing down, the weak peso and high interest rates
discouraging purchase of big ticket items. For the first half of the
year, Toyota sold less than 2,000 passenger cars, compared with the
2,300 Accord and Civic models sold by Honda.
