Internet Marketing Strategies from Brightspark Consulting Dublin, Ireland

Blogger In ‘Size Queen’ Revelation Shocker

January 28, 2010 at 7:45 am

The time has come to give back the Toyota iQ.

What I’ve loved:

The way the heating works. Heated seats, especially in recent weather conditions, have been a God send. Windows are all demisted, car is warm and toasty in minutes. A+ for this!
Nippy parking and sneaking into tight spaces ability. If you’ve seen a black motor squeezing through spaces that you wouldn’t dare touch in your saloon, that’s me in the iQ.
Paying no more than €30 to fill the tank at the petrol station. A ++ for this!
Room for fiancé and dog in front seat. This is because there’s no big dashboard/glove compartment.

What I’ve not liked:

The fact that there is no glove compartment means you’ve got to stick everything into a folder thing that falls apart if you try to put more than a packet of tissues in it.
Sore botty when driving on roads with speed bumps. I’m told this is the case for all Japanese cars, not just the iQ.
Having to change gear 3 times to make it up the gentle slope that is the N2. The iQ experience has shown me that I’m a bit of a size queen when it comes to cars. I like a big engine with lots of va va voom!

Overall, it’s been a really enjoyable driving experience. I would recommend a Toyota iQ for anyone who does city driving. It’s nippy enough to get around busy urban streets and you don’t need parking fairies when you’ve got an iQ.

Advice to Toyota

Update following recent interaction on Twitter (29 Jan): if you’re going to get your agency to use Twitter on your behalf, make sure they do it right. Put in some basic guidelines for how they represent you because the odd misinformed tweet here and there is actually damaging to your brand. After this blog was posted, I got asked by @ToyotaIreland on Twitter if I was going to buy the car. A little direct I thought. But obviously not really Toyota because we’d already been through this (and I decided against buying the motor). When I tried to Direct Message Toyota to let them know about this, I discovered that ToyotaIreland wasn’t even following me! You’d think they’d follow at least their 4 bloggers to keep an ear on them! In fairness, the lovely people I’ve dealt with at Toyota don’t seem that Twitter savvy, but the agency who sold them on this whole blogger/Twitter outreach programme should do. (I’m not naming names, but really you know who you are and you should have a bit more cop on).
If you’re running this experiment again choose the bloggers wisely, ie. make sure you choose bloggers who not only post frequently but ones who are out and about a lot. I found I did lots of ‘selling’ on the car when I was parking it in and around Dublin city centre. Invariably it drew comments from impressed onlookers as they saw me manoeuvre it into tight spaces! This would then spark a conversation about the car, I’d give them a look at the interior, there was many a soft selling opportunity. Actually … we should have a talk about my commission!
When you’re giving training on the vehicle, it would be helpful to present it in terms of “top 3 points on why it’s green”, “top 3 points on why it’s energy efficient” etc. That is how we bloggers think – in lists – and it took me a little while to get my banter going on when people asked me those questions.

So Mossy the dog says goodbye to the Toyota iQ (and so do I). And thanks to Toyota for giving me free motoring for the last 6 months.