Droga5 launched an ad promoting Toyota’s hydrogen fuel-cell powered Mirai which reunites actors Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox.
Part of its ongoing “Fueled by Everything” campaign, a new ad features the actors in a diner discussing which technologies featured in Back to the Future II’s depiction of 2015 have become reality, an approach sparked by Doc Brown’s fuel-cell powered DeLorean. “We’ve got 3D movies,” Lloyd says at the beginning of the spot, with Fox adding that fingerprint technology is also now a reality. Dog-walking robots aren’t here yet and the best we can do for a hoverboard is a second-rate facsimile. But at least we’ve got Pepsi Perfect. The spot ends by promising the “full film” will be released on October 21.
It’s a fun take on the “Fueled by Everything” campaign, built around the similarities between the vehicle’s technology and Brown’s fuel-cell powered vehicle in the film, which makes for something a lot more watchable than the lengthy digital ads we’ve seen thus far from the campaign. Since the Back to the Future movies are still wildly popular, it’s sure to attract its deal of borrowed interest attention, which may result in some people learning about the Mirai who otherwise wouldn’t have heard of it. Another ad, “Clocks,” takes more of a teaser approach, ending with the promise that “The future is about to become reality.”
“It was this really wonderful coincidence that we’re bringing to market the first time, in a retail way, a new fuel cell vehicle that runs on hydrogen, and that launch date happened to be October 2015,” Toyota national marketing and communications manager Doug Coleman told Adweek. “From a development point of view, there was nothing magical about that date other than that it coincided with the deployment of hydrogen fueling stations in the state of California.”
Droga5, however, “realized this happy coincidence that October 2015 just happened to be this magical month in which Marty McFly and Doc Brown go back into the future.”
There’s one more prediction from Back to the Future II which still may come to pass: a Chicago Cubs World Series win.