How Toyota Overcame Rural Resistance to Hilux Hybrid in New Zealand

Marketing a hybrid vehicle to a loyal, hardworking audience that views any form of electrification as "soft, city technology" is a formidable challenge. This was the precise task facing Toyota New Zealand with the launch of the Hilux Hybrid.

Their most dedicated customers -- rural Kiwis for whom the Hilux is a symbol of national identity and uncompromising capability -- greeted the concept not with apathy, but with open hostility.

The core of the problem was a perceived trade-off. In a category where toughness is king, the word "hybrid" was associated with compromise, particularly when it came to the critical metric of towing capacity. The brief, therefore, wasn't just about explaining a new engine; it was about fundamentally rewiring a deep-seated belief within their most skeptical audience.

Saatchi and Saatchi ECD Lee Sunter, executive strategy director Tim Cullinane, and Toyota marketing manager Jamie How tell LBB their collaborative process for 2024’s spot and explain how that feat influenced their most recent work, where the whole of New Zealand became an ad for Toyota.

LBB> The starting point for this one is marketing to your biggest critics and facing scepticism. What did that scepticism look like for you guys at the beginning of this brief -- what were you up against?

Tim> If you go back to the broader picture, the Hilux in New Zealand isn't just a vehicle. It's a symbol of us as a nation, and it communicates rural Kiwis, hard work on the farm, all of those types of things.

The only challenge is that our most loyal audience, which is hardworking rural Kiwis, don't necessarily want a more sustainable ute if it comes with any kind of compromises to capability. And when they saw the word hybrid, they associated it more with soft, city technology than with hard-working rural technology that they need to get their job done.

We collected rounds of feedback, in particular at field days. We got things like ‘don't know how to tow’, ‘not interested in hybrid junk’, ‘probably more for the city warrior than for the farm’. And what that meant is we got to a place where it wasn't just about apathy towards hybrid technology, like, 'I don't really care about it' but more like open hostility towards it.

Things like ‘I don't think that my vehicle is gonna be the same vehicle if you put a hybrid engine into it’. So overcoming that meant not just kind of explaining hybrid into their lives, but combating negativity around the word hybrid in the first place.

LBB> Where do you even start trying to do that?

Tim> What we're trying to do is rewire perceptions of hybrid in a category that trades pretty much entirely on toughness and capability. So, Prius has been a huge success for Toyota, but Prius is a light city car. It's not the kind of thing that survives outside of those city environments.

And what happens then is [you] go, ‘hybrid vehicles are for city people with compost bins, not farmers with livestock trailers’. And that means we're not adding efficiency, we're also subtracting capability in [farmers’] minds. And in a category where capability is king, that's a fatal move to make.

Ultimately, people think of toughness and capability in terms of being able to tow things around, and they go ‘electric vehicles or anything electrified is compromised’, specifically in its towing capacity. So that led to us to narrow in on the towing capacity of this. It's the brand new engine, but it's the same old backbone, the same old capability.

LBB> Tell me a bit about how it landed and what it's been like since launch.

Tim> What we saw is a massive uplift across spontaneous and prompted awareness. We set out to get about 5% lifts, by 13% to 18% in spontaneous awareness, and 78% to 83% unprompted. We smashed all those targets, which, given the really low media spend, is probably a testament to just how memorable and attractive the idea is to audiences. Everything went up, consideration was up 16 points, test drive up 11 points, and purchases across that period, we saw a 15% uplift in sales.

Lee> I guess generally, when we talk about our work, we know word of mouth can spread ideas quicker than a PR strategy can. Suddenly, a dealership wanted it over here, an event wanted it up here, and they were demanding it because people wanted to see it and touch it and see that it was true. That's pretty exciting when you get real people talking about it and spreading it for you.

LBB> Were there any learnings that you took from this one that you brought forward? Particularly thinking of the most recent Toyota work for you guys, where the whole country is an ad.

Tim> There are elements of it. I think what's really important with Toyota is a dedication to brand consistency over time and building up the brand world.

Jamie> This was a real step into a new way of doing things. We wanted to challenge ourselves and our team to do something different, but to maintain that Hilux legacy and add to the pages of Hilux in New Zealand. So this was a really bold step in a new direction, but it still had that Hilux-ness about it.

Lee> There were some good learnings of trusting your gut, I think, yeah.

I'd say it doesn't just take great agencies to create great work, it does take great clients as well, and I think this work is an example of that.