Automotive advertisers continue to innovate when it comes to broadband video, with new efforts from Toyota and Mazda especially noteworthy.
Toyota has taken the user-generated route, launching a website in November featuring testimonial videos to support its hybrid vehicles, which include the Prius. www.toyota.com/hybrids opens with a video from proud owner Craig, who explains his reason for buying a Prius before saying, “Now we want to know yours,” which directs users to a page where they can select reasons why they like their vehicle and create their own entries, which can be videos. Users have submitted videos showing their families, driving through the desert and engaging in active sports, which communicate environmental and other messages that support the vehicles. Saatchi & Saatchi/Los Angeles, the agency behind the campaign, worked with Vital Stream, which converts the videos to Flash and hosts the site.
Ian Wessman, director of creative technologies at Saatchi, said Toyota hasn’t been plagued by the problem Chevy had last March when it invited users to submit :30 ads for the Tahoe and received negative submissions. “The brand is so positive no one wants to disparage it,” he said. “We thought we’d have to reject submissions but we haven’t found the need to.”
Mazda is using videos of its top cars, from the earliest models to the present, at Mazdamuseum.com, a new site developed by Sarkissian Mason/New York in December. The Sarkissian Mason crew traveled to company headquarters in Hiroshima, Japan, to film cars at the corporate museum and to Mallorca, where three new concept cars were being introduced. The videos feature shots of the cars from all angles, sometimes in motion, with interviews of the designers. “It’s documentary style video, some of it shot in film, some in MiniDV,” said Sarkissian Mason creative director Daniel Ravine.
The goal of the site is to “bring out the sense of design history,” Ravine said. “Mazda has always promoted sports cars; this shows that Mazda has well designed cars.”
The site promotes new sales by documenting Mazda’s history of building beautiful cars. “It catalogs their achievements to strengthen the brand today,” Ravine said.
By Ken Liebeskind
Martin Scorsese On “The Saints,” Faith In Filmmaking and His Next Movie
When Martin Scorsese was a child growing up in New York's Little Italy, he would gaze up at the figures he saw around St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. "Who are these people? What is a saint?" Scorsese recalls. "The minute I walk out the door of the cathedral and I don't see any saints. I saw people trying to behave well within a world that was very primal and oppressed by organized crime. As a child, you wonder about the saints: Are they human?" For decades, Scorsese has pondered a project dedicated to the saints. Now, he's finally realized it in "Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints," an eight-part docudrama series debuting Sunday on Fox Nation, the streaming service from Fox News Media. The one-hour episodes, written by Kent Jones and directed by Elizabeth Chomko, each chronicle a saint: Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, John the Baptist, Thomas Becket, Mary Magdalene, Moses the Black, Sebastian and Maximillian Kolbe. Joan of Arc kicks off the series on Sunday, with three weekly installments to follow; the last four will stream closer to Easter next year. In naturalistic reenactments followed by brief Scorsese-led discussions with experts, "The Saints" emphasizes that, yes, the saints were very human. They were flawed, imperfect people, which, to Scorsese, only heightens their great sacrifices and gestures of compassion. The Polish priest Kolbe, for example, helped spread antisemitism before, during WWII, sheltering Jews and, ultimately, volunteering to die in the place of a man who had been condemned at Auschwitz. Scorsese, who turns 82 on Sunday, recently met for an interview not long after returning from a trip to his grandfather's hometown in Sicily. He was made an honorary citizen and the experience was still lingering in his mind. Remarks have... Read More