Making a car commercial to really stand out in the market today is pretty hard. However, Toyota did it with the 2014 Land Cruiser Prado at the end of last year, despite the fact it managed to catch our attention with those weird Japanese ads from before.
Leaving aside the short Muppets clips promoting the new Highlander, Toyota came with a Land Cruiser ad that makes you think its a movie if you’re zapping channels and stumble upon it.
Created in partnership with Draftfcb Johannesburg, the 2014 Prado is put in a dusty Central Africa theme, where its driver seems to have some problems at one of the continent’s borders. The guards seem really pissed off and they are speaking in an incomprehensible dialect, so he sees an opportunity and drives away, trusting in the new SUV’s off-road capabilities.
Being a tough body-on-frame vehicle packed with off-road electronic gizmos, the Land Cruiser Prado has no problems making its way in the desert. But when the driver looks in the mirror... surprise, the border guards are closely following him in almost same performance vehicles - a Land Cruiser V8, FJ Cruiser and an old FJ 40.
The runaway driver does a mistake ending up in a dead-end. He accepts his failure and one of the guards comes to his window with his hand towards his holstered gun.
The finale however gives away that it’s just a well made commercial (as if you couldn’t find out due to four Toyotas riding in the desert). The guard’s reaction is pretty hilarious, although the whole thing is a bit of a... cliché.
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