The Evolution of Toyota Prius' Commercials

In today’s advertisements many different techniques are used to grab the attention of the audience. Ads in the newspaper and in magazines may seem bland to some readers. Large corporate tycoons tend to adhere to the use of television as the ideal form of communication. Psychologically, bright colors, motion, and sounds help to catch your attention and keep you alert on the product. Whether positive or negative, the commercial most likely has an impact on your view of the product. Marketing in commercials always targets a specific audience to purchase that service or product. Automobile advertisements have had some of the most creative and unique cinematic graphics. In one of the first ever hybrid vehicle commercials in 2004, the Toyota Prius, is presented as a feat of technology here to save the environment using facts and an intuitive commercial along with the background of a city. In the more recent 2010 commercial of the Toyota Prius, an animated style using a happy melody presents the car as a family car ready to take your family to the next eco-friendly step with the background of a forest. Over time Toyota has expanded their clientele by offering a larger fleet of hybrid vehicles and by broadening the commercial’s influence on socio-economic classes.
Today, we all recognize the Toyota Prius commercial because of it’s distinctive music – the Prius “hum”. The hum uses lively melodies and a young female voice to evoke a sense of happiness and love. This correlates directly to the car because Toyota wants to show you that the car will make your family content and full of love. The clapping in the melody seems to give the audience energy and hypes the viewer up to purchase this product. The ingenuity of this commercial is that the hum is filled with a lot of information about the vehicle, not just random blabbering. This helps the viewer understand the product with the song alone. On the other hand, one of the first Prius commercials plays a different note.