TOYOTA
Hidden Danger
Art Direction | Design
THE CHALLENGE: Convince people to take in their recalled vehicles
People ignore recalls. And what could be so dangerous about an airbag? Airbags are safety features, after all.
Since 2008, airbag manufacturer Takata recalled over 100 million vehicles worldwide across 19 automakers. Over 30 deaths and countless injuries have occurred. The faulty airbags were exploding unexpectedly, shooting metal fragments like shrapnel into the car’s interior.
In Puerto Rico the risk of explosion was particularly high due to heat and humidity. When Toyota came to my team for help, nearly half of recalled vehicles on the island had not been repaired.
THE HUMAN INSIGHT
People ignore abstract danger.
It’s harder to ignore what you can see or feel.
AUDIENCE
Limited data existed on the specific demographics of recalled Toyota owners, so the communication needed to be broad enough to reach a wide range of drivers while remaining clear and relevant.
CULTURAL SPECIFICITY
Puerto Rican culture is rich with tales of the supernatural, folklore, haunting superstition, and the macabre.
THE CONCEPT
The Hidden Danger campaign delivered scroll-stopping visuals straight out of your favorite horror film, along with a crystal clear message:
There’s a killer in your car.
Due to budget constraints, instead of a traditional shoot, we built videos using still imagery. This actually required us to be very intentional about storytelling. Every frame had to work harder.
My role was to help shape the story arc and solve for the limitations — thinking in terms of sequence and pacing, and making sure each frame communicated the setup, built tension, and led to a resolution.
It was really about guiding how the visuals and messaging worked together over time, even in a simplified format.
It reinforced for me that strong storytelling and direction aren’t dependent on production scale — it’s about the clarity of the idea.
CREATING MONSTERS
for a Nightmare Recall Problem
Working with photographer and retoucher Scott Harben and his LA-based prop makers, we personified the Hidden Danger lurking inside the defective airbags. Vicious teeth, ghoulish eye balls, talons, and repulsive boy parts were custom-fabricated with latex and photographed inside a recalled Toyota Rav-4.
Roll Out & Execution
Where to reach people is every bit as important as how. For the greatest impact, this campaign needed to reach people while they were in their cars. Ads were strategically selected and placed so that our target audience would experience them while driving or filling up at the station. The media buy included radio, OOH billboards, video, and digital display ads.
To track performance, we set up a custom URL with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration team.
Results
Usually the measure of a campaign’s success is the number of views, clicks or conversions. This time our goal was to save lives.
Within the first three months, millions of drivers saw the message and thousands responded. Since the repair is proven to be 100% effective, it made a difference.
• • •
The campaign won a 2020 Gold SABRE Award and was recognized as one of the TOP 40 campaigns of the year at the Global SABRE Awards.
