Image edges Ace off Toyota brands

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.

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