On the Speed Channel, the Lead Roles in a New Show Are Played by 2 Toyotas

TheNewYorkTimes
By STUART ELLIOTT

January 12, 2007

TOYOTA feels the need ... the need for speed — Speed Channel, that is, as the automaker and cable network join forces for an unusual program in which the Toyota FJ Cruiser plays a starring role.

The hourlong special, called “Two Roads to Baja,” is scheduled for 8 p.m. (Eastern time) tomorrow on Speed, owned by the News Corporation; plans call for four repeats in the next three weeks. Speed is promoting the show with a two-minute trailer that can be watched on its Web site (speedtv.com).

The program follows the adventures, and misadventures, of two teams that competed in November in the 39th edition of the Baja 1000 off-road endurance race. Both teams — one composed of amateurs, the other of professionals — drove FJ Cruisers, a sport utility that Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. revived last year with a restyled version evocative of its predecessors, which were made from 1960 to 1983.

Although the Toyota agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, worked on making the show, along with @Radical.media, it was produced like an entertainment program rather than an ad or infomercial. The sole clue of its provenance is the copyright notice at the end, shared by Speed and Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A.

The concept may be borrowed from the early days of television, when marketers produced the programming, but it is intended to solve a contemporary problem: the growing ability of viewers to avoid traditional commercials.

“Two Roads to Baja” will carry commercials, but none for the FJ Cruiser; advertisers include Castrol, B. F. Goodrich, Lowe’s and Yamaha. One could make the case that because the Toyota sport utility plays such a crucial part in the show, commercials for it would be redundant.

Toyota has no plans to run TV commercials anywhere for FJ Cruiser because of a belief that the target audience — primarily men from 25 to 49 — is more effectively reached through nontraditional marketing efforts like branded entertainment.

“Two Roads to Baja” is the first show on Speed with this kind of advertiser involvement, Mr. Akin said. “We don’t have anything else like this in the works right now. But on a case-by-case basis, if the right pieces of the puzzle came together, we’d love to do something like it.”

Print ads for FJ Cruiser are running only in magazines read by what Ms. McCullough described as “hard-core enthusiasts” like 4-Wheel & Off-Road and Four Wheeler, along with publications aimed at owners of the original versions of the sport utility.