Toyota Industrial Equipment – Market Development

With new OSHA regulations making workplace safety more important than ever, and a breakthrough safety technology waiting in the wings, Toyota looked to our insight and expertise in the U.S. material handling marketplace. Our market research validated their proprietary competitive advantage, as well as the timeliness of a safety-focused message. As you can read below, our resulting comprehensive launch campaign was one of the most successful product launches in Toyota’s history.

Case Study

Integrated Campaign Delivers Big Results for Product Launch

Discover
To successfully launch a new forklift into the U.S. market, Nelson Schmidt was tasked with determining an available and profitable market position. Toyota was seeking to grow from its number seven position in the U.S. forklift market and had invested in the development of new technology to significantly reduce forklift tipovers. Due to pending new OSHA safety regulations, awareness of the need for greater forklift safety was at an all-time high. Also needed were baseline metrics to provide a measurement platform for all planned marketing programs.

Formulate
Through research we helped validate the competitive advantage for Toyota’s new 7-Series forklift — a dramatically safer forklift which greatly reduced the risk of forklift tipping. Nelson Schmidt developed a campaign for Toyota to own “safety” and branded the new 7-Series’ proprietary safety technology as the System of Active Stability (SAS™). Toyota’s unique selling proposition offered customers the world’s safest, most innovative forklift that increased productivity and reduced forklift accidents.

Execute
An integrated launch campaign was developed which consisted of on- and offline advertising, sales promotion, a new public web site, a secure dealer extranet to supply sales support and marketing materials, direct and e-mail marketing and a comprehensive public relations program. The creative concept drew upon Toyota’s orange brand color and the recognizable crash-test dummy icon to convey Toyota’s safety message and position them as the innovation leader.

Measure
The 7-Series SAS™ was the most successful product launch in Toyota Industrial Equipment history. The campaign had the highest readership in the history of Modern Material Handling magazine. Media advertising response rates increased 186%; web inquiries increased 212% and customer calls into our in-house call and lead management center increased 300% versus prior year performance. Toyota exceeded their 12-month sales forecasts by 31%, with 139 unit sales worth $5,560,000 tracked directly to the Nelson Schmidt lead center. This translated into a direct ROI of more than 200%.