You've got pretty much all of America watching.
It's gotta be amazing,
and that creates a ton of pressure.
It's something that we thrive on.
I like working under pressure.
You know, everybody has their own philosophy, whoever runs Marketing.
Mine was about two key words:
cheers, tears.
But we really want people to be able to remember
that this is more than just a car.
I want us to be able to move so many to be cheering for the car,
cheering for the brand, cheering for who we are.
The other side of it is kind of like tears,
that we touch your heart enough, it kind of makes you understand
that we're deeper than just selling products.
We're part of your family.
When you buy a Toyota, when you lease a Toyota,
when you're part of the Toyota family, you represent something to us
that's more than just someone that just purchased a car or truck.
You talk about a Highlander that's selling about 250,000
in a segment that has something like 24 competitors now.
Think about that.
They're all very similar, so the challenge for Ed in this
is how do you separate yourself even more from the competition?
It's an extremely, extremely crowded landscape.
The Detroit guys have decided that they're gonna get out of the car business,
so they're focusing all their attention on trucks and SUVs.
So that means they're putting a lot of money and a lot of resources into the midsize SUV segment
because that's gonna be potentially one of their volume leaders,
and that's exactly where Highlander is going to.
So this is probably one of the most difficult launches that we're gonna have as a company,
and so we need to make sure that whatever creative that we come up with
is gonna definitely resonate, but it's also gonna be true to what we are as Toyota.
The "Go Highlander" will be really interesting to see how we embed that through the Big Game concept.
We have a process within the company for development
that's called T2, or Total Toyota.
We have four major agencies:
They represent general market, the African American market,
the Hispanic market, and the Asian market.
It's really a collaborative effort.
It's led, in many cases, by Saatchi,
but the creative process actually is a collaborative amongst these four agencies.
It all starts with inspiration, being observant.
You know, the things you read,
the movies you see, the music you listen to,
the way you see the world around you,
and then translating that into a relevant story that makes sense
for what you're selling and who you're selling to.
It's interesting because we found that the personalities of midsize SUV drivers and owners
is really different from what we've seen in the past ten years.
So, our target, or our Highlander owner, is gonna be younger,
they're gonna put more emphasis on their vehicle reflecting their personality.
It's understanding how one key truth or human insight
can cross all of those different ethnicities,
and coming up with an idea
that emotionally connects people on that human insight.
So it's not just, you know, driving up in a mom-mobile
or driving up in a soccer dad SUV.
They want something that says, "Hey, I've arrived."
To put an ad in the Big Game is unlike anything that we do within the company
because the entire world is watching,
and also the entire world is extremely critical of everything that you do.
It's a difficult challenge, but I think the team, as well as working with Saatchi & Saatchi
and as well as all of our TDAs, it'll work.
All right, so we just got out of Leadership.
It was a tough meeting.
A lot of questions, a lot of scrutiny,
but I think we're gonna get through it, I think we're gonna be all right.
We just got a lot of work to do.
Hope you guys don't have plans for the weekend.
Sorry.
The way we get to here is a long road.
There's a lot riding on it, you know,
we're gonna be featured on the biggest stage in the world,
and this is the Highlander launch, it's the biggest, most important launch for 2020,
so the stakes are very high and the pressure is very high
and the expectations are very high.
The opportunity for creativity and emotion is significant.
The opportunity for Toyota, when you think about the role SUVs play in the lineup,
equally significant.
So, I think SUVs have kind of changed the game in the automotive industry
in the last five to ten years.
For Toyota, Highlander is a huge opportunity.
At the risk of sounding dramatic, it's a little bit like climbing Mount Everest.
Even if you've climbed it before, every time you do it, it's different,
because the weather changes, the conditions change,
the mountain changes, you change,
and to do it successfully and not die, you've got to be really well prepared.
You've got to be a team, you know,
you would never want to do something that massive on your own,
so you've got to be surrounded by the right people.
It's hours and days and weeks and months
and non-stop writing.
This is just a piece of old ideas, you know, old scripts,
old storyboards, old ideas that didn't make the cut.
What you see on the board looks really simple, and it's like,
"Wait a minute, all that work to get to this?"
But that's what it takes, it takes a pile like this
to get to one idea that is the one.
It's making people feel in a way that they don't normally experience
on behalf of a big hunk of sheet metal that gives them meaning.
Our job is to bring that to life, create that sense of excitement.
The reason that this spot was chosen for the game is...
I mean, it's pretty clear just to look at it.
The Highlander is the hero.
This story wouldn't work without the Highlander,
and the Highlander driver is the other hero in this story.
She goes around picking up people in bad situations,
and they're always stunned when they get inside the Highlander how nice it is in there.
Even when there's an alien on the loose outside the vehicle,
inside it's always calm, it's peaceful, it's wonderful, it's elevated.
It's based on a strategic human insight.
The people that drive Highlanders are typically--
we call them the glue people, they're the people that bring groups together,
they're like the ones that make things happen,
and this story taps right into that.
What are the consequences of screwing up on this particular spot?
The consequences are grim.
This is--failure is not an option.