Toyota Motor Corporation

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, April 1, 2000 by Elizabeth Gardner

STEVE STURM

VICE PRESIDENT, MARKETING

Toyota is out to reach almost everyone of car-buying age, and magazines are a good way to do it, says Steve Sturm, vice president of marketing. Last year the company spent $185.9 million in magazine advertising--a 9 percent increase over 1998--to promote its eponymous product line that includes Corolla, Celica, Camry, Rav-4, Avalon and the luxury Lexus line. But the world's number-four carmaker has also launched a number of youth products: the Echo, a revamped Celica and the MR-2 Spyder.

So to target younger prospects, Toyota recently began cosponsoring the Gravity Games, a breakneck sporting event created by Emap USA in conjunction with NBC Sports to support its "Raw Sports Group" titles like Powder, Snowboarder and Surfer. Here Sturm talks about print's place in the company's overall media strategy.

Q: What are magazines' strengths?

A: We have a large product line where each product appeals to a distinct demographic, and print is good at delivering a very targeted message for different demographics. But, obviously, it's also possible to do a broad print message. Print is sophisticated--you can get into more detail about product benefits and features. You can do three or four pages, and four colors.

Print also gives you the opportunity for value-added programs that aren't possible with broadcast. We've done tie-ins to travel programs, promotions with record companies, all kinds of things.

Q: How has your print strategy changed recently?

A: We launched a whole series of youth products, and that took us into a number of titles we hadn't been in before.

Q: Is there any demographic you have trouble reaching?

A: No. We can reach everyone we want to reach with the right magazine.

A: Where does the Internet fit into your marketing plan?

A: The Internet is an increasing part of our mix. It's our largest source of new leads, and we can find out people's names and where they're from. Some of the money going into the Internet is new money, but a lot of it comes from our direct-marketing budget. It's not coming from our print budget.

Q: What can publishers do to keep you happy?

A: We're sensitive to being environmentally pleasing to the reading public. We like opportunities to mix our advertising with relevant editorial, in special sections. We also like publishers that give us enough lead time to get into special issues, like the Sports Illustrated 3-D issue. We knew about that enough in advance to get together a nice 3-D ad. These are the types of things that help us maintain our position. Good publishers are sensitive to advertisers. We've asked for special treatment and positioning so that our ad doesn't conflict with the editorial, and 95 percent of the time, we get it.

We work with both individual magazines and groups. We like groups because they give us more synergy and we can pick and choose which ones we want to be in.

TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION

Headquarters: Toyota City, Japan

Total annual revenues: $105.8 billion

Major brands: Camry, Celica, Corolla, 4Runner, Echo, Land Cruiser, Sienna, Lexus

Total ad dollars spent in magazines, 1999: $186 million

                         TOYOTA AD PAGES, SPENDING
                         IN MAGAZINES IN THE AUTO-
                              MOTIVE CATEGORY
     Ad Pages   Ad Dollars
1991    1,933 $106,872,888
1992    1,842  110,652,024
1993    1,801  113,078,896
1994    2,011  132,194,504
1995    1,809  124,341,216
1996    1,646  128,633,528
1997    1,821  152,804,256
1998    1,968  171,844,720
1999    2,066  181,945,744
SOURCE: PUBLISHER'S INFORMATION BUREAU