TOYOTA is reviewing its 30-year-old ''Oh what a feeling'' tagline and has called on the two main advertising agencies - plus newcomer Droga5 - to come up with alternatives.
Toyota executives saw presentations from Saatchi & Saatchi, Publicis Mojo and Droga5, which quietly joined the tightly guarded roster this year to work on small car the Yaris.
The car maker, which is the leading brand in Australia with a 20 per cent share, is believed to be reviewing its brand in light of tougher competition from Korean rival Hyundai, which is giving Toyota a headache in the small-car category with its Getz and i20 models. Toyota's share of the Australian car market declined 1 point last year.
The appearance of Droga5 will undoubtedly add to what is already a fiercely competitive roster.
For years Toyota has played Saatchi and Mojo off one another for prestigious launches of models and work on the brand.
More recently, the quiet achiever on the roster has been North Sydney-based agency Oddfellows, which handles Toyota's retail advertising. It has been handed projects that ordinarily might have gone to Saatchi or Mojo, such as the launch of the Rukus.
In August, the Camry Hybrid account shifted to Oddfellows after Saatchi's launch campaign, which featured multicoloured Lycra-clad people doing cartwheels in the street, flopped. Oddfellows did not present last week.
Droga5's presence is expected to put more heat on Saatchi, which has been the loser in its share of the Toyota pie. It no longer handles any passenger car business for Toyota and has lost the Yaris, which it launched in 2005 as the Echo.
The relationship between the two underwent a test last year after Saatchi's social media pitch for the Yaris - an innuendo-laden spot featuring a young man exchanging banter with a father about sleeping with his daughter - caused a public relations disaster. Although Toyota marketing executives were supportive of the agency at the time, the embarrassment that the agency caused is believed to have been a factor in the decision to give Droga5 a chance on the account.
This week Toyota confirmed Droga5's appointment, almost a month after the agency's first work for Yaris had appeared on TV and in print, an ad that harks back to the line originally conceived by Saatchi: ''All of Toyota's big ideas in one small car.'' A new-model Yaris is due out next year. Several Droga5 executives, including executive chairman David Nobay, managing director Marianne Bess and planning director Sudeep Gohil, worked on Toyota when they worked at Saatchi. Saatchi did not return calls.
The last attempt to consider a replacement for ''Oh what a feeling'' was in 2005, when Publicis introduced a new tagline ''Can't wait for tomorrow'', which attempted to position the car maker as innovative, exciting and focused on the future. Yesterday, all the parties involved refused to comment on Toyota's review of its brand.
Droga5's executive creative director, Duncan Marshall, said the agency's appointment presented a ''huge opportunity to nurture a brand that has remained Australia's most trusted and innovative since it launched 50 years ago''. Toyota's marketing chief, Peter Webster, merely commented on the ad, not the appointment.
