Working with Prius is always fun, because you pretty much have to do a little out of the box thinking. Its not as sexy as the Camry or acquires the history and reputation as the Corolla, but it does have the Hybrid Technology and all the perks that come with that – fuel efficiency, financial benefits and definitely eco-friendly. The only hurdle was “how do you speak to the audience?” “What visuals can you use to help support and what kind of story can we put together that will tie that all up?” In this post I will show you what finally got approved and went live in the latter part of 2011.The concept that the client gravitated towards, had a real simple idea and message “New Way of Thinking” – this spoke to our target in a number of ways. First, our target market looks for style, power and reliability when choosing a new vehicle. They also want to ensure that whatever car they ultimately purchase – they receive the “ooooh…” factor from their friends and family – who doesn’t want that? Second, they want a car that has a proven reputation especially in the area of handling and performance. Lastly, when you look at a Prius it does not look roomy at all, and space was important, so instantly your mind shuts down not giving the Prius a second thought – not knowing that that the Prius does have a lot of, not only head room, but leg space as well.

One point that stood out though was that the target market were very interested in making the world greener, but not in the area of their automobile – with that it was a clear indication that we needed to create a campaign focused on telling our audience that they need a new way of thinking when it comes to automobiles.

We wanted to keep the banner clean as well as fresh (that is how the background color was chosen) and focus on the product as well as the messaging on-hand rather than gunking up the banner with unnecessary imagery. We used the image of a tall adult male to support the fact that the Prius has room, we then concepted the story of what happens when you change the your way of thinking because its only then when you open the doors for endless possibilities. The tree ties back to living green and the money represents the savings opportunities.

Its a simple message with a whole ‘lotta goals that we tried to convey in a 40kb, 15 sec banner ad. Mission Accomplished. Take a look at the screenshots: