Forty years and still feeling it: How Toyota’s longest running ad changed the category – and made Ford and Holden eat dust

News Analysis 19 Jul 2023 - 6 min read

Forty years and still feeling it: How Toyota’s longest running ad changed the category – and made Ford and Holden eat dust

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Paying homage to ad icon: industry veterans Allen, Miller and Pugh

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Toyota’s iconic ‘Oh What a Feeling’ campaign celebrated its 40th anniversary this week. Originally a US idea that Australia made its own, it helped Toyota become the first manufacturer to break the grip of Ford and Holden in the early 90s. Today it's top of the pack by miles, but could do with a shot in the arm. Mi3 spoke with the marketer behind the campaign Bob Miller, creative Roger Pugh and media buyer Steve Allen about how the ad came together, what it delivered and way the motor's still running sweetly four decades on.

What you need to know:

Toyota's Oh What a Feeling! slogan turned 40 on 18 July.
First developed for Toyota US, it was imported and given an Australian spin in 1983.
At launch Toyota was the third largest manufacturer behind Ford and Holden, three years later it roared past them both, and hasn't looked back.
The Oh What a Feeling! ads changed car advertising, focusing on the consumer experience and emotion rather than product and features.
The creative execution has evolved but the Oh What a Feeling! strapline and jump remain in play.
Though Toyota could now do with another shot in the arm. It's still number one by a country mile, but 2023 is proving tough.

Whether it’s a dog jumping in the air and saying ‘bugger’, a giant child playing with a toy Hilux and terrorising a couple of tradies; chickens losing their feathers as they cross the road or a bloke being reunited with his Hilux that fell of a large cliff – few brands have etched their place in Australian advertising folklore like Toyota’s ‘Oh What a Feeling’ campaign.

On Tuesday, the iconic strapline notched 40 years in service, making it one of Australia's longest continuous TV ad campaigns.

Although the creative has evolved, it has retained a sense of humour, quirkiness, joy – the resulting cut-through helping fuel Toyota's success.

It also helped unite the fragmented Toyota Australian business and propel it to the top of an industry long dominated by two American owned behemoths in Ford and Holden – and it remains the market leader by a country mile.

Which is a handy buffer to hold when the going's not so good. For the first six months of this year, Toyota's sales, at 92,235 are back 24 per cent versus the first half in 2022. But there's little danger of Mazda, the number two player with 50,424 cars sold in the first half, catching it any time soon.

How it started

So just why has ‘Oh What a Feeling!’ endured to well? Mi3 asked three of the marketing and advertising veterans who helped launch the campaign.

Roger Pugh was the managing director of Dancer Fitzgerald Sample Australia (bought by Saatchis in the mid-80s), the creative agency that originally launched the ‘Oh What a Feeling’ spot. He told Mi3 the campaign served as a pinprick to the oft-cliched automotive advertising bubble.

“This campaign was such a revolution because it wasn't about the manufacturer's perspective on their car, it was the first campaign ever to advertise a consumer point of view; how enjoyable and fulfilling it was to drive a car,” he said. “It was about people as much as cars – and this formula has been dynamite [since].”

Pugh, who cut his teeth in advertising under the likes of advertising luminaries such as Bill Bernbach – the B in DDB – thinks the secret is that it is just a “tremendously engaging” device, literally tapping emotion in a commercial, opening consumers up to persuasion.

This aligns with Bernbach’s philosophy of advertising: You must first engage people at an emotional level and then you persuade them – now standard practice for pretty much all effective advertising.

Pugh's view is seconded by Steve Allen, who delivered media strategy and buying for the campaign with the agency AIS Media (now Starcom). Toyota's newfound “warmth and humour”, connected with viewers emotionally – and since then, consistently.

“Toyota went from a brand that was not being considered to the most recognised in just a few years,” said Allen, now Director of Strategy & Research at Pearman. “Back then, the only brand metric it was number one in was reliability, we needed to change that. Oh What A Feeling! made owners feel good about owning a Toyota; the catch cry also unified dealers and staff."

We spent $90 million a year convincing people that Toyota is a bloody good friend.

— Bob Miller, former GM of Marketing, Toyota Australia

The early years

‘Oh What a Feeling!’ has not just been a success from a marketing perspective, it also played an important role in transforming Toyota Australia from a fragmented group of franchises into one of auto giants most successful markets outside of Japan in terms of market share.

In 1979, Toyota HQ in Japan wanted to unite its Australian businesses, which primarily consisted of a separate commercial vehicles importing franchise, Thiess Toyota, which was headquartered in Sydney, and a car manufacturer plant, Australian Motor Industries (AMI), in Melbourne. Both franchises operated separately under the Toyota banner with separate P&Ls and marketing functions.

Toyota was the number one seller of commercial vehicles, but its consumer car business was ranked fourth, well behind market leaders Holden and Ford, and battling with Japanese rival Datsun (now Nissan).

Despite respectable market share, Toyota’s brand metrics, such as brand recognition and consideration, lagged rivals. Although the brand was widely known for its reliability, it was considered by consumers as dull.

Bob Miller, Toyota’s General Manager of Marketing between 1981 and 1996, told Mi3 the ambition was two-fold: to combine the car commercial vehicle franchises under a single Toyota Australia brand, and become the market leader.

Advertising would play a key role.

“We looked around the world to see what everybody else was and we came across the Americans (a Chicago agency called Botsford Ketchum – later acquired by Saatchi & Saatchi),” Miller recalled. “When you visit an ad agency, the first thing you ask for is the rejected ideas, because you'll often find it's their best work.”

Toyota US had used the ‘Oh What a Feeling!’ strapline for several years, but ditched it, allowing Toyota Australia to swoop.

The Australian team would put its own spin on ‘Oh What a Feeling!’ creative by focusing on the experience of the driver jumping for joy. Oh What A Feeling! began with a Toyota Corolla ad and then released Corona and LandCrusier ads. They were instant hits, and so Toyota went large.

“We spent $90 million a year convincing people that Toyota is a bloody good friend,” Miller said. “Whether you want a forklift, a car or a van, Toyota will make you feel good, it makes you feel confident that it'll never let you down.

“People thought we were mad with all of these people jumping on air in our ads; I thought, ‘we’ve really cut through if we’ve got our rivals mad’. Forty years ago this was revolutionary.

“The campaign gave us huge momentum. In 1986, we got to number one.”

The ‘Oh What a Feeling! platform also provided a clarion call for the two different franchise cultures of Thiess Toyota and AMI to rally behind the Toyota brand – critical in a business that relies heavily on its dealership network.

However, it wasn’t an easy sell for the AMI business, which traditionally was more conservative in its thinking, serving Australia's rural areas.

“We had the usual argument between Sydney and Melbourne,” Miller recalled. “The Melbourne guys said ‘real men don’t jump’. So we went away, scrammed up some footage of the AFL and said to them, ‘what do call these guys – pansies?’”

There are other straplines, such as VW group or BMW, but they don’t really execute in a consumer facing way.

— Steve Allen, Director of Strategy & Research, Pearman

LA Olympics splash

It wasn’t just TV advertising where Oh What a Difference! Was making a splash. Toyota stuck a nine-month media deal in the lead up and during the 1984 LA Olympics, activating torch relays, TV shows and other mass moments in the lead-up to the games, a first for an Australian brand at the time.

Toyota also bought an advertising takeover of the leading business magazine of the time, The Bulletin, and began marketing cars to female drivers in women’s magazines – considered brave advertising at the time.

The Oh What A Feeling! Ads have been worked on by some of Australia's top creative shops, including Saatchi & Saatchi and Mojo.

Over the years the creative has evolved introducing Australian’s to talking dogs, giant children, chickens, exploding outhouses and an array of other humorous characters that simply loved owning a Toyota whatever quirky moments life threw their way. The original concept of the driver jumping at the end has also given way to other characters jumping.

For Miller, Pugh and Allen, Toyota's ads continue to stand out. Allen thinks its because they remain largely true to the principles established in 1983.

"“If you look at Oh What a Feeling! ads today, you won't find many car features or talk about performance, it's still a consumer proposition of satisfaction and the joy of owning a car," said Allen. "There are other straplines, such as VW group or BMW, but they don’t really execute in a consumer facing way."

Miller thinks it's as much to do with a lack of cut-through from rivals as anything else.

“I hate to say this, but today’s car ads are boring, I have to think pretty hard of the one I can remember,” said Miller. "For the most part, they are invisible.”