The plum task of unveiling the Toyota FCV—the automaker's entrée into the fuel cell car space—puts Droga5 into the automotive category for the first time.
The hire also explains why the agency is not among the agencies meeting with executives from Infiniti, the luxury marque of Nissan, a Toyota rival. Those meetings are taking place this week.
The Toyota FCV will be sold initially in Japan, the U.S. and Europe and and not until next year. But the first ads from Droga5 are expected to roll out in a few months. The automaker is expected to use a mixture of social media marketing and traditional advertising in the launch campaign.
By going with Droga5, Toyota is bypassing lead global agency Saatchi & Saatchi. But using different agencies for different models is not unusual for the automaker.
For example, the lead agency for Scion—a car that targets twentysomethings—is Attik in San Francisco. That said, the FCV is a big global launch that Saatchi no doubt would have loved to handle.
