It was radical in its time - a Japanese firm advertising in Irish. As Toyota marks 30 years here. Hugh Oram recalls its winning Irish strategy
On it's 30th anniversary it is appropriate that Toyota Ireland has won back the top spot as the leading marque in Irish car sales last year. It has been a tough battle over the years, particularly with the arch rival blue oval of Ford. But it has been a tale of creativity and imagination when confronted with a multitude of challenges.
It all began with a yellow Corolla on display in the Ballsbridge showrooms of Stephen O'Flaherty, the man who had brought the VW Beetle to Ireland in 1950.
O'Flaherty had also taken on the Toyota brand but wasn't convinced that Toyota could ever become a big marque here.
However, Dr Tim Mahony and his brother Denis had other ideas. The brothers heard the Toyota franchise was on the market and decided to take the plunge.
Figures in motoring publications at the RIAC archives in Dawson Street, Dublin, tell their own story. Between January and April, 1973, just 79 Toyotas were sold. For the whole of that year, the figure was 570.
When Toyota Ireland, under Mahony control, began building cars, initial capacity was just 17 a week. Soon after, they decided to go for broke and doubled that capacity.
When Ireland entered the EEC, the practice of building cars from imported kits was under long-term threat. Once a marque reached a market share of five per cent, the government would give permission to import fully built cars.
By the summer of 1975, Toyota Ireland was selling enough cars to qualify for fully built imports. It achieved the magic five per cent figure and one month that summer showed a 5.02 per cent market share. As Mahony recalls, rather wryly, that 0.02 per cent represented just two cars.
In the event, Toyota Ireland continued to assemble some cars until 1983. Now car assembly is one of Ireland's vanished and largely forgotten industries.
When it started, Mahony knew that to gain market share from the established brands, especially market leader Ford, Toyota Ireland needed to advertise.
Thus began one of the most memorable advertising campaigns, remembered fondly by car enthusiasts at the time. The most striking feature: the use of the Irish language.
Even today people still approach Dr Mahony, chairman of Toyota Ireland and of the Killeen Group, to reminisce about these adverts and the era in which they and the company grew in popularity.
The campaigns proved highly successful - the advertising was so strong that just 13 years after the Mahonys had started to make and market Toyotas here, the marques penetration of the Irish market was the highest in Europe.
Much of Toyota's advertising success was down to one man, the late Brian Cronin. He had returned to Ireland from the US in 1968 and set up his own agency in Dublin.
Cronin had a very fresh, creative approach to advertising and, for the first time, American advertising values infused an Irish agency. He and Mahony decided on a strategy that would give Toyota Ireland a strong Irish identity. Today the company remains 100 per cent Irish-owned, while binding in a growing dealer network.
Tim Mahony, Dublin born but educated at Cork's North Mon, where former Irish boss of Ford Paddy Hayes was also educated, has always had a strong interest in Irish language and culture. He decided for starters that at least 25 per cent of the Toyota Ireland advertising budget would be spent as Gaeilge.
One of the best remembered slogans showed a full fuel gauge and read "An ball atá mall san Toyota" (the slowest moving part in a Toyota). Another stated "Bí ann gan teip - Ní thuigeann Toyota teip", which roughly translated as "Be there without fail - Toyota doesn't fail." Another slogan was "An van is fearr san Tír" (the best van in Ireland). Toyota was promoted as the new Irish word for reliability.
Some English-only slogans were also used, including "the only garage you'll ever need is your own" and "sooner or later, you'll go Toyota. The sooner the better". In those far-off days, a Corolla cost about £1,500 at the time.
The aim, says Mahony, was to use simple school Irish. "For many people, the happiest days of their lives are their schooldays," he says.
Cronin devised other more powerful images for Toyota, but these simple, folksy ads have stuck in the minds of many people. No other car advertising from the 1970s is remembered with such affection.
OUTLANDISH ideas were tried and worked well too. At a time when Toyota Ireland couldn't get new models from Japan, it took up an idea from Brian Cronin - to cover the gap with a madcap drag character, Maude Frickert, brought in from US television advertising. "She" was the sort of "mom" that you wouldn't bring your girlfriend home to meet. The idea worked a treat.
Mike Murphy's radio testimonial ads in the mid-1970s also hit the spot. "Is it true what they say about Toyota?" was pioneering stuff, among the very first testimonial advertising in Ireland.
For about a dozen years now, the account has been with another Dublin ad agency, Javelin/Young & Rubicam. There altogether different campaigns have been devised, including the theme of Toyota being the best-built cars in the world. A claim like that has to be backed by cast-iron research.
A book published in 1990 by three senior researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), The Machine That Changed the World, looked scientifically at car production around the world. It concluded that the Toyota lean production system was indeed the best.
With this and other studies, Toyota Ireland has been able to support its claims of engineering pre-eminence.
Another new and highly original advertising tack also worked well, using TCD academic and poet Brendan Kennelly to front Toyota advertising. Kennelly had been appointed professor of modern English at Trinity in 1973, just 30 years ago. His appearances for Toyota were probably the only time that a Trinity professor has been used to front car advertising or indeed any other kind of advertising.
For the best part of 20 years now, Toyota has been at or near the top of the best-selling car charts in Ireland, alternating from time to time with Ford. Strong and consistent advertising and sponsorship support have helped keep Toyota Ireland among the leaders.
But it has not been easy. During the past decade, according to figures from the Central Statistics Office, Ford has been the market leader in all but two years. Indeed, on one memorable occasion (1996), Toyota managed to be relegated to third place.
The latest figures show that Toyota Ireland may have begun the catching up process: figures for 2002 show Toyota had a market share lead over Ford of 0.1 per cent, 11.4 per cent, compared to Ford's 11.3 per cent. That 0.1 per cent may be statistically small but psychologically of huge importance.
The new car market in Ireland has shrunk considerably over the past 12 months and it's also characterised by a proliferation of brands.
What Toyota Ireland really needs now to continue its 30 years of largely blip-free existence is another highly imaginative advertising campaign that will grip the public imagination just as firmly as those Irish language ads did nearly three decades ago.