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Scion Aims Online Videos at Young Buyers

Scion's campaign for its latest small car will also feature an interactive car brochure and an online museum that highlights underground movements like Chicano punk music in Los Angeles.

IN Toyota’s view, its Scion brand of automobiles is not just for anyone. The cars are for the young and fashionable — they are called “influencers” these days — who spread the word about the vehicles after encountering the company’s art, music or comedic marketing.

That is why Scion’s newest model, the iQ, is arriving nationally today with humorous online vignettes, which range from wry to a bit racy, and other digital offerings like an interactive car brochure and an online museum that highlights underground movements like Chicano punk music in Los Angeles.

Ever since Scion, which is a Toyota division, was introduced nine years ago, the brand has fielded offbeat marketing approaches to build an 18- to 34-year-old fan base. In introducing the iQ, its first new model in three years, Scion is hewing to the ahead-of-the-pack marketing approach that particularly appeals to youthful urbanites and the fuel-conscious.

“We are trying to hit the younger market since this is usually a first new car for our buyers,” said Owen Peacock, Scion’s national marketing manager. Some 75 percent of the iQ’s buyers are new to the Scion brand, according to the company’s most recent data.

The center of the “iQ Therefore i Am” campaign is a series of 12 brief online skits, called “Park!” The episodes, available on YouTube and on scion.com, include one in which an orange iQ — a color Scion calls Hot Lava — whips easily into a parking space that most drivers would have to spend considerable time maneuvering into to achieve.

Three episodes will be posted weekly, beginning Monday. Later episodes include one called “Presidential Park,” where a Barack Obama look-alike emerges from a Scion that has pulled up between two American flags. Suited men rush to open the car door, and the “president” steps out with swagger befitting an exit from a stretch limousine.

Another set of videos called “Donuts,” which will appear starting in early April, stresses the iQ’s roominess and tight turning radius. In “Babes and Donuts,” for example, four scantily clad young women are seated in a Scion while eating doughnuts and drinking milk, which splashes around as the car careens in circles around a parking lot.

“We are pushing the boundaries,” said Simon Needham, co-founder and executive creative director of Attik, a San Francisco digital and design agency that is part of Dentsu. “But we had to get over that the car has an amazing, small turning radius and emphasize the car’s size by showing how easily it parks.”

In the Donuts episodes, he said, “we wanted to show that four people could fit easily even if they are burly bikers.”

And “we had to think about what was fun to watch,” he added.

The light-hearted approach, said Mr. Needham, who has been working with Scion since its 2003 beginning, “is different from our earlier more creative, dark and mysterious approach. The youth market changes, and this type of content raises awareness.”

Attik devised the online skits, and Bon, the creative content agency of the Malbon Group, created the Scion iQ interactive brochure, which supplants the traditional printed car brochure for the model.

Interested buyers can use the interactive brochure to view videos of the features, performance, safety and other aspects of the iQ model. A dozen musicians and other artists made the videos, said Stephen Malbon, the founder of the Malbon Group. The videos are available on scion.com and scionav.com, the Scion audiovisual Web site.

As part of its wide lifestyle marketing net, the Scion iQ digital museum, which the Bon agency organized, will feature information on influential artists like the hip-hop producer Prince Paul, and the defunct Strata Records in Detroit, said Mr. Malbon.

“The collector who has 5,000 fliers about a subculture in a shoebox isn’t going to be able to put them on the Internet,” said Mr. Malbon, who is planning more digitized exhibits of underground movements, “so this is a way for that to be done and shared.”

Scion did not disclose the spending for its ads for the iQ, which is one of four Scion models available. Figures from Kantar Media show that Scion spent almost $20.5 million in 2010 on its television, radio, magazine, radio, Internet and outdoor advertising. Last year, from January to September, the company stepped up its spending, to $18.1 million over the nine-month period.

Also in Scion iQ’s marketing mix are a test-drive program this spring in markets including Los Angeles, Chicago and Austin and “art cars,” where various artists design iQ cars, a project of the Beyond Marketing Group in Irvine, Calif.

In addition, the Scion iQ campaign plans some “seeding” events in its main markets to showcase Scion’s involvement with art and music.

As part of the lifestyle packaging, the campaign has also created the Scion eMagazine 20, for the work of 10 artists asked to create their ideal life/work space that is no larger than 10 feet long, 10 feet wide and 10 feet deep. The Scion iQ fits into the same dimensions. Print versions of the magazine will be available at certain Scion iQ events.

“The iQ is going down the digital marketing trail,” Mr. Peacock said, “but we’re not forgetting about television, print and billboards because at the end of the day the customer does not buy virtually.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Scion Aims Online Videos at the Young. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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