Toyota Yaris Hybrid Advertising Approach Doesn’t Make Much Sense
Toyota’s approach to electrified vehicles has been a head scratcher for a long time now — the company was the industry leader with hybrid technology for a long time, but has seemingly been dragging its feet as much as possible since then … with some “other issues” popping up along the way.
These “other issues” include the company’s recent advertising of some of its electrified models. A case in point: advertising for the new Toyota Yaris Hybrid in some markets.
Push EVs did a nice article on the matter recently, so I’ll just draw from that to make some of the relevant points here.
First off, why would Toyota specifically mention in its new UK commercial for the Yaris Hybrid that it can run without being charged by a plug? Almost all cars sold nowadays can, can’t they? It’s a strange thing to put in a commercial — do they think that they are going to steal potential Nissan LEAF or Tesla customers or something?
Here’s the ad in question:
Push EVs provides more: “Yet, if you think that the commercial above by Toyota UK is bad, Toyota Portugal managed to do worse. In its Portuguese commercial, Toyota says that the Yaris Hybrid can run 50% of the time in electric mode, all this without charging.” 50%? Huh?
“The truth is that Toyota plug-less hybrids have a electric range of roughly 2 km. They can only be used for 50% of the time in electric mode in very especial occasions, such as been stranded in intense city traffic for 30 minutes in a 60 minutes journey.”
Here’s the ad:
And a bit more from Push EVs: “However, this commercial wasn’t very well received in Facebook, where — unlike what happens with television advertising — we can immediately see people’s reactions. In fact, the reactions were so bad that Toyota Portugal had to reply by saying that the company has 20 years of experience regarding hybrids and already sold more than 10 million units around the world.”
I don’t speak/read Portuguese, so I can’t comment directly on that, but that does make it sound like Toyota isn’t too likely to change its approach to advertising anytime soon.
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