If you’re a car company, putting your potential customer “in the driver’s seat” virtually is pretty easy these days, using everything from television commercials and online videos to augmented and virtual reality. But these only allow you to convey the sight and sound of that new car experience.
To promote the 2018 Camry, Toyota and their agency Saatchi & Saatchi, with the help of Structural Graphics, pulled the humble automobile ad into the third dimension with a removable insert that not only engages four of the five senses, but also quickens the pulse of anyone who comes in contact with it.
Inserted into select copies of InStyle magazine and mailed to some 50,000 unsuspecting subscribers, the promotion looks like a substantial high-end brochure while closed. Opening the cover reveals a gatefold with two car door handles and the words “Indulge your senses in the 2018 Camry.” Grasp the cleverly die-cut handles with your thumbs pressed firmly against the metallic dots provided, give them both a tug, and what was once a modest brochure suddenly folds out into a paper-based Camry cockpit.
No detail was spared in the recreation of the car’s interior, with the pop-up steering wheel exactly where it should be in relation to the dashboard dials and electronic readout. The gear shift, too, is close at hand just where you’d expect to find it.
