トヨタ | ファンカーゴ | 2000
Crammed Full, Yet Somehow Not Annoying / Toyota "FunCargo"
This is a 2000 Toyota FunCargo commercial. It's built around a rapid-fire narration that crams in benefit after benefit, then lands on the line "Where I go and what I do is my own business" followed by the sound logo "Fun-Car-Go!" Despite being packed with information, it somehow doesn't feel annoying. This ad is now 18 years old (as of this writing), but the approach would still work perfectly well today.
The problem
The FunCargo was a tall wagon built on the Vitz platform. Its tagline was "portable space," and it had a unique mechanism that let you fold the rear seats down into the floor—basically a car built entirely around practicality. This car had so many benefits that the sales team, the company president, everyone probably wanted to cram all of them into the commercial.
The insight
Clients (probably) always want to pack every single benefit their product or service offers into a commercial, and there are likely all sorts of reasons behind that—"sales wants this," "the president wants that," and so on. I imagine creators who can solve that problem this elegantly must be a real relief to work with.
The idea
The ad crams together down-to-earth benefits (spacious cargo area, seat arrangements, etc.) with a slightly more fantastical one (the feeling of freedom to go anywhere and do anything) using fast-talking narration, then lands on the tagline "Where I go and what I do is my own business" and the sound logo "Fun-Car-Go!" The pacing of the narration must have been calculated with incredible precision—it doesn't feel annoying at all, which is remarkable given how much is packed in.
Afterthought
The footage looks dated now, but the approach still holds up completely. It's a technique for showing "benefits that are crammed in" in a way that "doesn't feel crammed in." A textbook example of how to do this.
