Why is Toyota being generous to children online?Last time I was on the Toyota Motor Corporation website, keeping our Toyota insurance expertise up to date, I found myself distracted by the fact they had a children's section. Although I'm probably too old to appreciate it fully, it was remarkably pleasant to spend some time with the adorable chicks and rabbits that are there to make Toyota's work understandable for children.
At first I was delighted with the amount of information here, and the bite-size answers the organise that information. This means that children who are, say, doing a school project on cars can research to their hearts' content in a space where the information is shaped to fit their levels of understanding. Then it struck me that this website existing means Toyota is interested in making sure that children know about what they do, years before they are able to drive and therefore – more importantly – years before they could possibly be a customer. Why would they do this? There's only a small amount of room in a corporate culture for simple generosity, and this is quite a big site for children to explore. One obvious answer is that this could be to encourage brand loyalty, so that the children will grow up with a memory of Toyota being their introduction to driving, and naturally end up buying a Toyota car to drive when they are first able to do so. If you needed further evidence on this front, look no further than Whyville, a Second-Life-like online world aimed at children, where characters are now able to ‘drive' a virtual Toyota vehicle, the Scion xB, around the online world. Statistics from Whyville suggest this is very popular with its users.
While Toyota's Aygo continues to sponsor Channel 4's youth strand T4, it seems it's not just Toyota reaching out to young people on television; the new Skoda advert where a car is constructed from cake ingredients to the tune of ‘My Favourite Things' has proved very appealing to younger viewers, and Honda's ‘Grr Song' advert – the one that invited you to "hate something, change something" – is packed with birds and bunnies, just as Toyota's children's site is. Honda has even released ‘The Grr Game', a computer game which can be played for free across the internet, and in which you play a white rabbit changing hateful things into lovely ones. With a big hammer. Some people have worried that this is an attempt to harness ‘nag factor' – assuming that parents are likely to be influenced into buying a Toyota by their advertising – although large purchases like cars are thought to be less influenced by children's opinions than smaller expenses. The genius of it, though, may be in their capturing the appeal of nostalgia for our own youth. When I saw the young figure that learns about Toyota's work from the cleverest chick on their site, one of my first thoughts was that he reminded me of nothing more strongly than Bod, who often pops up in conversations after too long in a pub. Perhaps that's just me – but I'm sure you'll have something (Bagpuss, or Super-Ted, maybe?) that affects you the same way. These sites could exist, then, simply because it speaks to the child still lurking in our psyches, making Toyota appeal to us either through our own nostalgia or us hoping that our children will enjoy it as much as we do. And the altruistic gesture of providing this information, perhaps making our children safer drivers as they reach driving age, appeals to the current local, organic, friendly attitude that consumers are growing into.
Here at Hoot Car Insurance Services, we already believe young drivers in the UK are better than some other insurers do, which is reflected in our motor insurance quotes. Naturally, this means we're fans of the idea of young people growing into safer drivers, and if Toyota's communication with children helps that happen, then that's something we'd be in favour of. Now, if only they could remind me of the names of the people on Button Moon…
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