Toyota enters the world of fashion to shake its ‘mainstream' appeal

The Japanese car manufacturer enlisted the help of Takahashi to design its latest Aygo x model which is debuting at the Paris Fashion Week show for his brand, Undercover.

Spring Studios, which previously worked on Hyundai’s Re:Style sustainable fashion project, is behind the launch campaign. The agency's president Susan Pratchett tells The Drum the two brands on paper are not an obvious match. "Undercover as this very subversive streetwear designer and Toyota is a mainstream and incredibly well-known brand,” she explains. “But sitting at the heart of them is this functionality and innovation that is so interesting when you bring the two of them together.”

The collaboration follows a trend for car brands to look beyond traditional forms of marketing amid a slump in car sales not seen in nearly 30 years. “The idea is to break down boundaries and challenge the conventions of that category,” Pratchett says. “We all know that automotive can be quite traditional in the way that it approaches things.”

The collaboration was born out of a need for Toyota to reach new audiences. “It has been designed for people to think differently about Toyota as a brand, but also how cars can play in that world [fashion],” Pratchett explains.

The creative concept is set in a hidden city called ‘Paris, Tokyo’ where the virtual and the physical worlds are blurred. It’s been cast with influencers who will then amplify the campaign through their own channels. “It’s a mix of two different brands coming together but a shared world of Japan but also style and inventiveness,” she says.

This isn’t a one-off campaign for Toyota, Pratchett tells The Drum. “These are long-term brand-building objectives for Toyota, which aims to evolve the brand and evolve its audiences by finding new ways to talk to them,” she reveals.

Toyota hasn’t necessarily been associated with style in the past, Pratchett admits, so this push into fashion aims to give it some credibility in that space. The campaign aims to tap into a “more style and fashion and tech orientated audience who are sort of looking for something different, something that’s a little bit unexpected.”