Going off The Deep End
I have always been terrified of water. An early childhood experience of nearly drowning left me with a lifelong fear of swimming pools and bodies of water. My inability to swim was something that, though it rarely interfered with my life, made me feel ashamed and inferior to other people. Last summer, I decided it was time for that to change. Over the course of two months, I fought through the fear and taught myself how to swim in the pool at my local gym.
Toyota’s Super Bowl Ad: A Lifeboat Among Troubled Waters
I’m not a big fan of the Super Bowl, but I do find the advertisements fascinating. They seem to bring a level of theater and complexity that regular ads lack. They are most often of the storytelling kind of advertisement rather than the pushy, product-focused kind. It is fascinating to see how the genius of marketers can connect seemingly unrelated forces into a powerful emotional experience for the viewers. While many people were focused on Jeep’s commercial, an Americana-infused plea for unity among a politically divisive population, I had a hard time connecting to it emotionally. However, the Toyota commercial featuring the story of Jessica Long stirred many feelings in me. As I watched it, it took me right back to the pool at L.A. Fitness those many months ago, fighting through my own panic as I surrounded myself with water and tried to conquer my self-consciousness, shame, and fear. For a moment, I felt a deep empathy with Jessica Long, understanding the mix of emotions she must have felt, from the feeling of being watched and judged by those around you to the burning desire to succeed and do your best. The ad doesn’t feature any Toyota products, and even the logo only appears at the very end for a few seconds, but the storytelling in the ad was enough to leave a lasting impression on me. This is a great example of content marketing, where companies use storytelling that is powerful enough to stand on its own as a vehicle (no pun intended) to support their own branding message.
An Emotional Depth Charge
After doing a little research, it seems that I’m not the only one who was affected by the Toyota commercial. The ad received significant earned media, gathering buzz and positive attention from news outlets, being shared avidly on social media, and receiving praise from influencers from the disability community as well as pro-adoption advocates. The video received 943K views on Youtube alone. The tech company Unruly rated it as the most impactful commercial of the Super Bowl based on its own UnrulyEQ measuring tool, citing it as the most likely ad to impact the brand’s image and improve customer’s intent to purchase their products. Unruly is not surprising anyone when it reports that consumers’ emotions are very close to the surface this year, and that reported responses to the ads were more intense than usual. The Jessica Long commercial was no exception. While the contents of the ad had nothing to do with Toyota’s vehicles or products, it did a masterful job of setting up a narrative of hope, resilience, and empowerment — things that people are desperate to feel during this bleak moment in history.
Seeing Hope in the Darkness
I am always impressed by the ability of marketing to bring together disparate elements into a unified whole. You might think that the story of a little girl born with a disability into a Siberian orphanage has no usefulness promoting a Japanese-turned-American car company, but the magic of marketing makes it possible. By playing a light hand with the product-pushing tactics of traditional marketing, this ad (and its competitors in the Super Bowl category) goes above those simple strategies and becomes part of an art form in itself. It allows customers a moment to feel things they repress — isolation, loneliness, doubt, and fear of being rejected by others — and provides a hopeful arc by which they can be redeemed and empowered through Jessica’s story. Toyota has always been a brand known for its reliability, and accessibility to everyday people. Their sponsorship of the Olympics and Paralympic athletes indicates that they care about people with disabilities, not just as potential customers, but as people who deserve opportunities to succeed and prosper. At a time when COVID-related care is being rationed and disabled people are feeling afraid of being left behind, this ad is a great reminder that every person’s life has value and should be supported to fulfill its full potential. It may have little to do with buying cars, but it is a message that comforts and inspires viewers, myself included.
