Toyota Opens War Chest And Allocates $1 Billion To US Marketing

Rather than put that money toward building more desireable cars, they use that money instead to trick people with marketing.

bingo. takes a lot of dollars to make boring appear sexy.

because the only money they spend is on advertising right? Please. Toyota has the luxury of spending money on advertising and engineering. Toyota still outspends everyone on R&D.

No, he's just the jealous type.

Maybe they should spend in the same fashion that marked such success....just the way the article suggests! Oh, BTW, they are #1. get over it.

Weak comment

Dumb move, why not $1B for design and engineering.

obviously their design and engineering has gotten them to the #1 auto-maker in the world right now...you don't fix what's not broken.

$500 million will go to the hybrid line, it's their new bread and butter. Camry/corolla is still their, but the Prius is quickly picking up pace...

The article didn't say they were spending it on marketing to trick people into buying cars. They said they were spending it on incentives, and lease offers, and marketing. The "and marketing", I presume, is to advertise the incentives, etc. Nothing stupid about this. It's exactly what needs to be done. That's good news for people considering a Toyota in Q4.

No. ONE in:

1) sales
2) reliability
3) state-of-the-art engineering
4) customer satisfaction
5) not having QUIRKY

...QUIRKY styling (call it boring if you yourself are quirky, but their CLEAN contemporary styling does not AGE like others. what you'd want and EXPECT of vehicles that easily last 15 - 20 years!)

these are in response to Lexsuks' ? below...

#1 at what?

Hey, if this was GM or Ford, EVERYONE on this site would be crucifying them for spending that kind of money on "marketing" instead of improvements to their products. Fair is fair. And this is a stupid move for Toyota.

looks like people are doing that to them too. Did you read the comments above

it's not a stupid move for toyota. it's a very smart move to ramp up spending when everyone else is cutting. makes your marketing stand out even more. marketing is, after all, responsible for a HUGE part of toy/lex' success. they outspend EVERYONE.

Yes it's stupid to spend money on advertising. How does that make any sense at all?

r15mohd,

Toyota #1 in design and engineering? Are you serious? Toyota couldn't even build a competitive F1 car despite have 8 years and the most money. And you call that #1 engineering.
Toyota has some of the most disillusioned fans. I guess all the money spend on marketing actauly works. lol!

"Toyota couldn't even build a competitive F1 car"
Which F1 do you watch. Toyota's car is one of the best in the field this year, third best actually after Brawn and RedBull. Ferrari and Mclaren benefited a lot from Kers despite having a fundamentally slower and less downforce producing car, they just pass 6 to 7 cars at the start, which is very important in F1 and get good results what can others do.

And also F1 team is very different from the teams which develop road cars and road car technologies. There is less than 5% sharing or you can call link between these different technologies.

BMW is very bad this year, in fact worst now Force India is targeting regular points, does that make upcoming BMW performance cars automatically bad? X5M and X6M are bad because BMW is the slowest in F1?

BTW I think Toyota should finalize the buget of their F1 Team quickly and put some money in that. There is a possibility they will quit. Also hire a top driver, i would say give lots of money to alonso as it appears he is going to be jobless (Renault admitted they cheated in Singapore last year and are going to get some big penalty, most likely will be kicked out of F1).
Kubica is also a good option and without a drive for next year. Just kick trulli out. I am sure Toyota must have won at least one race this year if they had alonso/hamilton/kimi..etc like driver. Trulli had great chance in Bahrain and Spa but he blew it.

JUGNU

aside from F1 being a whole different arena than production cars, toyota is SO COMPETENT in engineering, they not only make the most bulletproof automotive products on the planet, they engineered a totally NEW WAY of assembling cars.

since they ALREADY have the best products, why throw yet more money on improving the cars? it's smart of them to toss a few bucks now on marketing and incentives.

it also helps SPREAD THE WEALTH. a good gesture from the richest auto company. this will win them yet more customers and goodwill.

Jungu,

Which F1 am I watching? The same F1 that I’ve been watching since 1992. Toyota has not won an F1 race since it entered F1 about 8 years ago. If that's what you call competitive then I do not know what to tell you. BMW has won F1 races. Have Toyota? Red-Bull has won F1 races. Have Toyota? Force India (a Junior team) went from the back of the pack and is now faster than Toyota. The Force India team is only about 2 years old. They did more in 2 years than Toyota could do in 8.

I'm sorry but if Toyota is consistanlty getting beat and can't even win a race (and getting ouperformed by junior teams). Then their race-car technology is clearly not the best. The same can be said about their road cars. Toyota the most technologically advanced Automotive Company? Only in a FanBoy's dream.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^
"Effin loser"

wasn't Shemp one of the original Three Stooges?

shempy is 3x the stupidest stooge all by HIMSELF.

What is the most exciting car in Toyota's Lineup? That would be the Matrix. Sad! When a car like the Matrix is Toyota's most exciting car then something is wrong. With the Lame model lineup that they now have, they have no choice but to spend Billions to market the snoozers. People (some not all) can be made to believe anything if enough money is spent. Toyota having the most technologically advanced cars in the world is one of them. They do not.

Most advanced. Please... If you look at Toyota's current model lineup how can someone say something so retarded? The Camry really gives the Maxima the business. Yeah Right. And the Matrix Blows away the Mazda 3. Lol!! Then there's the Yaris, now that's a technological showcase.

When you say "most advanced" do you mean at Toyota's price point?
Even then the argument is weak.

it seems you are simply too STUPID to recognize that maybe 80 - 95% of car buyers do NOT measure cars by how "exciting" they are. everyone has different priorities, and for many, RELIABILITY, ENDURING clean styling, and VALUE rank a lot higher than being able to accelerate to 60 in one or two seconds (say nothing of just 0.1 or 0.2) faster than a competitor.

success is best measured in the auto business by sales numbers and PROFITS, not what the cars may or may not do on racetracks.

and as for advanced engineering, toyota was the FIRST to offer a 4-cam engine in an econobox (camry v6).

and maybe the first to also offer DOHC 16-valve engines even in their cheapest models. (even honda only gives you SOHC on many models).

and NO ONE has bettered the prius on hybrid engineering and efficiency, and even the germans are now DESPARATELY PLAYING CATCH UP on hybrids.

ok, you want mainstream rather than niche cars...

how about the '09 venza and '09 corolla which have already popped out of the development pipeline? while the corolla is more a refinement rather than a drastically changed new car, nevertheless it is another generation. AND, it is again a great sales success! one of the MOST POPULAR choices both in 'normal times' AND the recent c4c program.

the new 2010 4Runner has just been introduced too. and with lower or comparable prices to the '09s, and more content.

foezzy is the only guy who can fart thru his mouth/keyboard! LOL!