Speed Channel, Toyota Team For Show With Branded Content

Speed Channel, Toyota Teaming Up For “Two Roads To Baja”

Toyota and Speed Channel will “join forces for an unusual program” — an hour-long special called “Two Roads to Baja” –- that follows two teams that competed in the Baja 1000 off-road endurance race in November driving Toyota FJ Cruisers, according to Stuart Elliott of the N.Y. TIMES. The show debuts at 8:00pm ET Saturday and “plans call for four repeats in the next three weeks.” Although Toyota’s agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, “worked on making the show, along with @Radical.media, it was produced like an entertainment program rather than an ad or infomercial.” The show will “carry commercials, but none for the FJ Cruiser.” Toyota has “no plans to run TV commercials anywhere for FJ Cruiser because of a belief that the target audience — primarily men from 25 to 49 — is more effectively reached through nontraditional marketing efforts like branded entertainment.” Speed Channel VP Bobby Akin said that “Two Roads to Baja” is the net’s first show “with this kind of advertiser involvement.” Akin: “We don’t have anything else like this in the works right now” (N.Y. TIMES, 1/12).