Early innovator in the alternative energy space, Toyota turned up the heat this week on Tesla (and other industry critics), by literally calling out and knocking down their pessimistic opinions towards hydrogen.
Toyota’s Fueled by Everything campaign consists of five episodes, the first of which launched last week on Earth Day. The main focus of the first episode, called ‘Fueled by Bullsh*t’ addresses the doubts around hydrogen fuel technology.
More than a well-designed and enjoyable piece of advertising to promote the new hydrogen-powered Toyota Mirai, the campaign underscores the importance of consumer education in our ever-advancing world of sustainability innovations. It also drives home the increasing level of competition in this space, with companies vying for the attention (and dollars) of conscious consumers. Though Toyota’s campaign is still self-directed, this is an exciting evolution of brand marketing that moves environmental impact messaging front and center, where such innovations have the capacity to benefit not only the brand or its direct consumers, but communities at-large.
The campaign website dives deeper into the science behind hydrogen fuel, offering up insights, Q&A’s, and also a preview of future episodes that showcase other renewable sources such as solar, wind, and biogas from landfills.
Through engaging storytelling, accessible narrative, and a comedic direction, Toyota breaks down the complex innovation in its new car into manageable, easily digestible information that resonates. In a time where resource scarcity poses one of the most critical issues of our generation, the prospect of big brands exploring alternative energy sources, even in something as taboo as manure, is the level of advancement we all need to get behind.
Finally, the campaign also shows that the purposeful storytelling space is maturing in that we are not just seeing brand embrace alternative fuels, but they are starting to get competitive around their purpose in terms of storytelling. One can only hope this will inspire even greater responsibility and innovation among brands that will benefit directly as we all benefit long term.
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