OTDA: Drive In Another Dimension: 3D Experience

Agency: Dashboard Communications

Project Role: Lead Art Direction, Direct Mail Design, Campaign Look and Feel, City Map Planning and Storyboards, Project Management

Awards/Recognition: FWA Public Shortlist

The result of nearly 8 months of work; the Toyota Drive In Another Dimension campaign was my last project developed while at Dashboard and my proudest project – a result of tireless work from the OTDA Account team, programming department and creative department as well as all our 3rd party vendors. The project was an exercise in visual, audio and interactive excess. Part of a direct mail campaign and a website for the Ontario Toyota Dealers focused on promoting coupons for lapsed and existing Toyota owners. With a print run of over a quarter million for the direct mail piece and over 400,000 branded 3D glasses it was one of the largest projects I’ve ever lead. The additional glasses were sent to Ontario’s 78 Toyota Dealerships to have on hand when customers visit over the promotional period. The direct mail piece was a parts and service focused folded print piece designed for viewing in traditional stereoscopic 3D with the attached branded 3D glasses (so people would look at it and keep it).

The piece pushed users to the site which was developed in both 2D CGI and stereoscopic 3D CGI and featured an aerial perspective city users could drive through in search of offers. Attached to each offer we developed narrated, demonstrative videos focused on showing users what the offer entailed and the benefits to getting the service. Part of the OTDA’s Parts and Service ongoing mission to bring brand and information to customers alongside retail offers. Once users collected the offers they could drive to the dealership to finish the game and redeem their coupons. While at the dealership they could also share their time, retry or chose to cruise the city with no timer. For those who wanted to continue driving we threw in Easter eggs like Toyota messaging on billboards, the ability to change your car’s colour, horns and full environmental audio effects, brake marks when at high speed and the ability to drive off road finding shortcuts.

During our QA development we handed out glasses to the entire company and asked them to test the site in a companywide QA session. And due to excitement from the OTDA board we had the opportunity to present it directly to a boardroom of Toyota Canada International employees at their Toronto offices. Some of the best comments we heard during launch and shortly after included people receiving the direct mail piece and having their children pull them to their computer to play and see the site in 3D, high site traffic (numbers to come) and people saying it was challenging but highly addictive.

Site: www.toytoa3d.ca

Ontario Toyota Dealers 2010 Site Redesign

Agency:Dashboard Communications

Project Role: Lead Art Direction, Site Frame Work Redesign, Project Management

Capping off an very rewarding 3 years working on the Ontario Toyota Dealers client at Dashboard I was able to help in bringing forward a much needed redesign of the realtoyota.ca web site bringing out a new home page, new vehicle details pages and photo galleries – while still maintaining some of the older content the site was known for such as the past video walk-arounds, parts and service sections and dealer locator (which had be done at a previous time by various Dashboard team members). The key reason for this site redesign was to bring the site up to modern online requirements by building a flexible architecture that was built with evolution in mind. Unlike it’s predecessor which was build in flash over 4 years earlier this site was built in HTML with CSS and a collapsible architecture allowing for new sections and pages to be easily added or removed. The pages are made to grow as long as needed for any content and can support dynamic, static or video content easily. A major benefit was also the addition of social bookmarking, direct printing components and the always important SEO friendly content strategy. Bringing the OTDA into a modern online digital realm.

The home page was build to aggregate site content. To bring forward content within the site and offer easily updatability. So when a new offer came down from the dealers or a change was need it would be possible vary quickly. We felt there was a lot of good content including video walk-arounds, parts and service information and promotional content that was previously buried. The structure allowed us to bring that content forward.

Finally, in-depth research in user interaction was integrated into the entire site flow to build a streamlined experience. These updates included visual main navigation, descriptive tool tips on rollovers to give users context of what they would click through too, descriptive live text with banners and placement of content along the fold. By putting various content purposely on the fold we force the user’s curiosity to explore and scroll down the pages that are longer – ensuring they experience all content on each page.

Future phases of the site will included an updated dynamic dealer-locator and additional sections focused on social communication between customer and dealer. These additions will hopefully be built in at a future date by the hardworking team at Dashboard.

Site: www.realtoyota.ca

Toyota Canada’s 09 Fall Promotional Campaign: “More For You”

Agency: Dashboard (Digital), Dentsu (Traditional)

Project Role: Lead Art Director, Designer, & Managed Production

Dentsu approached Dashboard with an opportunity to work on our first national Toyota sales program after seeing the work we have and continue to demonstrate digitally for the Ontario Toyota Dealers Association. Built in a whirlwind time line over August we developed an online concept to feature 6 key vehicles and offers with supporting facts. The “Did you know?” facts related to each vehicle to inform users with things they may have not known about Toyota as a brand and about each individual vehicle. Simple, clean and flexible for future rate changes that are expected to happen over the course of the 3 month promotion – the micro site is a first for Toyota in the digital realm for a promotion (instead of a new model release platform). Accompanying the site we developed a series of both standard and expandable banners sharing the facts and car details in two languages (english/french) across Canada.

Site: View the site

Ontario Toyota Dealers Klick Club Direct Mail

Agency: Dashboard Communications

Project Role: Lead Art Direction, Design & Managed Production.

As a continuation of 2008 planning – the Ontario Toyota Dealers and Dashboard designed an envelope, reminder letter, offer letter, email blast series and a magnet die-cut sheet for the kids. The idea supporting this campaign focused on the “magnetic” personalities of Toyota technicians and the quality of their work and dedication to service literally pulling or attracting Toyota owners back. Using this idea we developed a series of rules to live by to improve the relationship with your Toyota: The Rules of Attraction.

Ontario Toyota Dealers Klick Club

Agency: Dashboard Communications

Project Role: Lead Art Direction, Illustration, Design & Managed Production.

Site: KlickClub.ca

Klick Club is a lapsed Toyota owner focused campaign from the Ontario Toyota Dealers. Working at Dashboard I helped develop a custom logo, emails, post cards, seasonal based coupon book and a micro site (seen only by targeted users) to host coupons. It was rolled out in the fall of 2008 and continues to extend into 2009.

Ontario Toyota Dealers Parts & Service

Agency: Dashboard Communications

Project Role: Lead Art Direction, Design & Managed Production.

Site: Realpartsandservice.ca

In the fall of 2007 Dashboard helped the Ontario Toyota Dealers Association launch a new division focused on service to help existing vehicle owners called Parts And Service. In what became one of the longest single first phase initiatives in Dashboard (and my) history, we spent twelve plus months developing a strategic and creative power house for the OTDA which included this web site and the launch of a new regular Parts and Service focused direct mail brochure to be mailed out out to nearly 200 thousand customers from all the current 78 Ontario Toyota Dealerships.

Breaking new ground in customer service and launching along side a well received sales site, realpartsandservice.ca focuses equally on three key points; education, retail and lifestyle. It’s not just about getting your brakes fixed. Its about learning how your brakes work…what is a brake drum?….why and when do you need to have it checked and reminding customers that preventative maintenance will not only make your vehicle last longer, but keep you and your family safe. Honesty and sales working together, who would have thought.

The project featured a three day photo shoot, video recorded conversations with senior Toyota technicians for what added to hundreds of hours of research, months of build and development and for myself a complete understanding of all sides of advertising and client services as well as creative development. The project is ongoing with future phases already in development.

The direct mail brochures focused equally on three key points; education, retail and lifestyle. It’s not just about getting your brakes fixed. Its about learning how your brakes work…what is a brake drum?….why and when do you need to have it checked and reminding customers that preventative maintenance will not only make your vehicle last longer, but keep you and your family safe.

The direct mail brochures were structured in a very specific manner: we start with branding and mission statements (an introduction to the OTDA’s beliefs), then starting at the tires the brochures take the ground up approach (wheels to brakes, brakes to internal components like the engine or battery, and out to external and additional, yet still important parts and services. While doing all this it constantly infuses lifestyle and reality into why all this matters along side useful information such as the prices and benefits of each part and service that your dealer can help you with, all designed to push customers into the dealership.

Ontario Toyota Dealers Parts & Service
Realpartsandservice.ca Web site

Ontario Toyota Dealers Parts & Service
Fall Direct Mail

Ontario Toyota Dealers Parts & Service
Winter Direct Mail

Ontario Toyota Dealers Sales DVD

Agency: Dashboard Communications

Project Role: Lead Art Direction, Design & Managed Production.

In the fall of 2007 Dashboard helped the Ontario Toyota Dealers Association further amplify their newly launch sales site and service site with a dealer DVD.

Packaging all seventeen 3-5 minute vehicle walk around videos from one of Toronto’s largest summer commercial shoots to run on a standard DVD player was only part of the effort. We also developed animated screensavers, wallpapers, an icon package and a desktop video player for all the videos to further help the OTDA sales teams in communicating Toyota vehicles’ benefits included on the DVD. Delivered with a custom dealer mouse pad it was used in dealerships through out Ontario.