Toyota’s ‘humility’ problem and big fix: An Australian brand makeover expands across 17 Asian markets to tackle next gen perceptions that rivals are snappier, louder, more innovative on mobility’s future

Australia is Toyota country and holds similar clout and market dominance across 17 key markets in Asia. But there were looming clouds on the horizon that Toyota’s APAC execs could see would pose a near-future challenge for the region’s leading carmaker. Toyota’s “humility” around innovation and the future of mobility risked being too conservative and out-voiced by more aggressive, louder rivals attempting to own these new greenfield areas - and Toyota knew its next generation customers were being lured. Here’s how Toyota’s APAC VP of Sales and Marketing, Jerome Louis, and an Australian firm, Houston, mapped and delivered a four-year program to unify, for the first time, 17 highly-autonomous countries, all with their own market positionings, brand strategies, taglines and imagery, with a sweeping and unified overhaul of Toyota’s brand positioning and architecture. It’s an instructive case study in not having a fixed plan at the get-go but letting each of the markets discover and create a new positioning and suite of brand assets together – “Move your world”. Here’s how it happened.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.