TelevisaUnivision Campaign for Toyota Tundra Wins Advanced Advertising Innovation Award for Best Use of Branded Content

A campaign submitted by TelevisaUnivision for the Toyota Tundra won the 2023 Advanced Advertising Innovation Award for Best Use of Branded Content.

The award will be presented at the Advanced Advertising Summit on September 11 in New York.

Previously, it was announced that a campaign submitted by iSpot for Consumer Cellular won the Advanced Advertising Innovation Award for Best Use of Multiple Platforms, a campaign submitted by Magnite for Travel Texas won the Advanced Advertising Innovation Award for Best Definition of a target market and a campaign for Ken Ganley Kia in New Port Richey, Florida, won the Advanced Advertising Innovation Award for Best Use of Data.

The Toyota campaign marked the start of TelevisaUnivision’s Asi Studios, which worked with Toyota’s Hispanic ad agency Conill to spotlight “unstoppable” U.S. Hispanics making a difference in their communities.

Asi and Conill produced a docufilm on the “Imparable [in English, unstoppable] Ismael Guzman,” a Toyota Tundra owner who distributes soccer equipment in neighborhoods with needs.

The film branded Guzman and Toyota as leaders.

Toyota is the top-selling automotive brand among Hispanics, but the truck category has been dominated by domestic manufacturers. The Tundra, Toyota’s full-size pickup truck, is ranked No. 5 in the truck category behind Ford, Chevrolet and Dodge.

Conill used this insight to leverage the power of Hispanics and grow market share within the demographic.

In addition to running advertising spots across both multicultural and general market platforms, there was the opportunity to create a film, and they produced Imparable Ismael Guzman.

Conill and TelevisaUnivision highlighted Guzman’s story in a digital- and social-first campaign while establishing the Tundra vehicle as a working/honorary member of the Guzman family.

Toyota wanted to target “Legacy Makers” — well-known community role models. It defined this target as adults 25-54 with incomes of at least $50,000, a high-school education and established families. The size of this audience is estimated at 6.2 million.

These individuals use social media to stay connected with family and friends, particularly those who live in Latin America. They stay current on local news and do research and watch sports highlights on platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp and Instagram.

Social content was tailored to each platform and their various placements, using a variety of long-form, short-form, vertical and horizontal content to reach different audiences.

A media campaign to tell Guzman’s story consisted of 15-second and 30-second spots that ran in preroll and midroll inventory, selected with a contextual overlay. Guzman’s story was also told by Univision in segments on the local news; on its national morning show, Despierta América; and during sportscasts.

According to post-campaign studies, the performance exceeded the brand's primary KPIs. The documentary-style videos over-delivered on video view guarantees by 27%. Furthermore, the campaign was very well received by Univision’s social audience with comments sentiment showing 85% positive reactions, surpassing Talkwalker’s sentiment benchmarks for similar TU-branded content campaigns by 28%.

Hispanics who engaged with the videos were also 1.6 time more likely to consider the brand featured as a “leader,” a key KPI for Toyota’s brand identity.

Research from Shareablee shows the company boosted Toyota’s familiarity by 6 points, elevated viewers’ opinion of the brand by 15 points, increased consideration by 6 points and boosted recall by 23 points.

“We are excited to partner with the TelevisaUnivision team on the launch of Así Studios, providing an innovative platform that created a wonderful opportunity to feature the story of the Guzmán family along with the all-new Tundra,” Ann Dragovits, media manager, integrated marketing operations at Toyota Motor North America, said. “This partnership allows the brand to be part of creative and culturally relevant storytelling that showcases our vehicles in an authentic way for our Hispanic audiences.”

“We feel like there are a lot of stories about our audience that show the positive impact they have on America and those need to be told, and told by brands,“ Dragovits said. “A big part of marketing now is making sure brands are helping and being constructive.”

Added TelevisaUnivision executive VP and chief growth officer of U.S. advertising Dan Riess: “We feel like there are a lot of stories about our audience that show the positive impact they have on America and those need to be told, and told by brands, a big part of marketing now is making sure brands are helping and being constructive.”

The Advanced Advertising Summit is part of NYC TV Week, which is produced by Broadcasting+Cable publisher Future plc.

Stay tuned as we reveal the Advanced Advertising Innovation Award Winner for Best Overall Campaign.