Monday, October 7, 2013

Toyota Camry Roller Coaster Ad

This is kind of a fun ad, showing people get into the back seat of a Toyota Camry, and then they get taken for a ride through a track that makes their experience like that of riding a roller coaster at an amusement park. But I really think this idea would work even better if it were for a muscle car like a Dodge Challenger or a Chevy Camaro or a Stingray Corvette, and the track was bright yellow like the old Hot Wheels tracks were. (Then maybe they could do a loop-de-loop. I'll bet a Camry couldn't do that. And probably not a muscle car, either. So maybe use CGI, and pretend the car really will make it, so drunk macho guys would peer-pressure each other into trying it for real, only to fail each and every time.) Because while this spot is really fun and creative, it's for a boring sedan, and despite the thill ride depicted, nobody's going to think of a Camry like this in real life. But with a real muscle car, however... (And with a muscle car on a life-size Hot Wheels track setup, the ad pitch could be that now that you're all grown up, you can have the grown up version of the car you played with as a little kid, and it's even more fun to play with it in the real world than it was to play with the toy Hot Wheels version as a child.)

Here's the thrilling Toyota Camry track commercial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAvIPfzqQh4

(You know, come to think of it, I seem to remember seeing a car ad relatively recently that used this Hot Wheels track idea, but it must have been for some inappropriate model of car, because I can't even remember the car, or even the specifics of the ad, whereas if it had been a muscle car, I think I would have remembered it in detail. And that's the problem with some of these car ads: the neato cars don't need a lot of creativity to sell them: all you have to do is show the car, and it sells itself. But if you use fun & flashy ads about racing and excitement for bland economy compacts or blasé sedans, it just doesn't work well, because all the razzmatazz in the ad only serves to accentuate the fact that the boring car is out of place in an exciting, revved-up milieu.)