It seems that sometimes advertising scrapes the bottom of the barrel for ideas.  We are getting better at ignoring the desperate lengths some companies go in order to ‘inspire’ us. That is one word that is gold to advertisers. Inspire. Products are so much more exciting when they are ‘inspired’ by something. Toyota have taken this advertising angle and driven it (pun intended) to new levels of absurdity.

Let’s first look at the ‘F1-Inspired Hilux Concept’ recently unveiled in the UK.

It’s difficult to tell but the F1 car is on the left. The similarity, however, is uncanny - what with the red and white paint… and four wheels… and Toyota badge?

Don’t think that the Toyota advertisers stopped there.  They obviously went to the engineers and got a thorough insight into the inspiration for their entire product line.  They then discarded the truth of “we just based it on last years model” and came up with something more exciting.

Here are (apparently) the three biggest influences on the design of the new Toyota Aurion according to their TV ads:

1. The 3rd fin (Thruster) on a surfboard.

 “Like Thruster, we’ve combined control and power for better performance”
Good to know for next time you are surfing your Aurion at Byron.

 2. Big Bertha Golf Club

 “Like Bertha, we added more power without using any more energy”
Like Bertha we achieved this by making the Aurion big, chunky and ugly.

3. The “Superbike” (actually bicycle and not that super)

“Like the Superbike, our improved efficiency means far better performance”
We did this by installing pedals for the occupants to use.

The funny thing about these “inspirations” is that I can’t quite see it in the Aurion?  Maybe they will make it more obvious in the 2009 model - of which I have managed to score an exclusive picture: 

See the colour of the umbrella?  You know what that means - this model is “F1-inspired”!!!!  Oh, what a feeling. Toyota.

The funny thing about advertising is that in business you have to advertise in some form to survive.  For most companies this means making a boring product seem… well… less boring.  Some poor guy in the advertising department has the job of turning everyday, mundane products into objects of desire.  It would seem that often they just fill in random text, hope no-one will notice, and duck off early from work to grab a beer.  Either that or they get the work-experience kid to do it while they play Solitaire.  It would appear that the guy at Laser adopted one of these two strategies when designing the packaging of an external hard disk drive I just bought.  The product looks like this:

It is pretty much a box.  Actually not pretty much, it is.. a box.  It does do some techno stuff however allowing you to plug in a hard drive to increase your usable porn storage.

Easy to advertise right?  Just point out how many giga-cycle, mega-doobs it has and throw in some techno babble that will have your average Harvey Norman buyer chomping at the bit to part with their cash. 

‘No, no, no’ said Laser advertising guy, I want to emphasise the DESIGN.

The result is this box:

The three main advertising points?
1. Orange trim
- cos orange goes with everything.
2. Comes with stand
- you mean I don’t have to just stand it on one of those flat edges all ghetto-style???
and 3.  Wait for it…
“Streamline, sleek design”

It’s a rectangle??  With square, flat edges?? There are not too many designs that are less ’streamline’ or ’sleek’.  (That fat chick who won Australian Idol does come to mind though). 

Fortunately the guys decided to end their work-day there as I would hate to see what imaginative words they would have come up with to describe the stand:

“The work-experience kid suggested ’scrotum-like’”
“…”
“I got nothing, let’s go with that.  See you at the pub?”