Toyota Matures its Scion Youth Brand

[Murrow]

Toyota Matures its Scion Youth Brand

Chris Woodyard
USA Today
January 1, 2013



Scion found it was selling to older customers more than the ones it pitched.

LOS ANGELES — It's called growing up.

Like the twentysomething who graduates to cabernet from six-packs and comes to appreciate creased slacks instead of ratty jeans, Toyota is taking the same approach with its youth sub-brand.

Scion was Toyota's iconoclast for almost a decade, a grand effort to reach Generation Y as if they are an entirely new kind of customer. The lineup stressed personalization and quirkiness to set itself apart from the cars that everyone else drove.

But Toyota's once-highflying division is facing lackluster sales. To fight back, the company is aiming Scion's marketing toward a slightly more mature shopper — emphasizing traditional showroom draws, such as performance and sophisticated looks. Instead of advertising through non-traditional, off-beat art or music publications, Scion is running TV commercials on NBC and ESPN.

"I don't know that the trendsetters are necessarily the target (customer) anymore," says Bill Fay, a Toyota group vice president. Scion will not "walk away from them," but the brand is evolving.

"Youth has changed in the past 10 years. As youth changed," he says, Toyota has had to "look at the brand."

Continues here.

[Amphibian]

This is essentially a step in the right direction. Toyota may be labeled as boring, but sales of Corollas, Camrys, etc, seem to indicate that although there are sportier and more emotional choices, a TON of people want smooth and quiet (not that they're automatically the smoothest and quietest in the class, but you get the point). Personally I've advocated on here for a more Pontiac-esque concept for Scion. They have the FT-86 which was the first step in that direction I spoke of, but next, how about some sort of American-spec Mark X? RWD, small-ish, can fit plenty of power under the hood or not so much, and would make for a nice flagship for Scion as long as it's sporty and "youthful". Youthful shouldn't have to mean cheap and Toyota should reevaluate positioning Scion "beneath" Toyota. Funky, fun cars to Toyota's quiet, mature offerings. You cover both bases and the brand is already established. It's not even like they'd need to invest in hardly any new, Scion-specific products either.

[BlackGTP]

I never thought Scion did so well in the first place. My impression was that media spin made it sound great, but sales volumes were always pretty low.

[bballr4567]

Scion failed at its original mission. Its about 3-4 years late for Toyota to realize that.

[jzchev28]

Of course they need to mature the brand, the only people that buy Scion's are old men.

[mchicha]

Corollas and Camry's are most boring in automotive land, and Scion is a coastal brand of the uber liberals who get duped to pay more for !Expletive ! like this !Expletive ! 'youth' brand.
That Subaru is the only car worth looking at in the entire brand and even one cannot justify its price aganist a Camaro or Mustang.

[zete]

Wow. Doublespeak there or what? We were only able to sell the few cars we did sell to the elderly, so we're now targeting a more mature market. Wha??

Ironically, they finally have a car that would appeal to youth -- the FRS -- so now they're going to market to folks 10+ years older than the market for that car? Pardon? Someone in their 30s isn't going to be hankering for a Scion FRS. Maybe if Toyota had a Supra, but not the FRS.

Toyota should stick to what they know best: boring, pedestrian automobiles with no soul for the nearly dead.

[t-rex]

With Toyota's elephantine global product portfolio, it would be not only feasible, but arguably wise, to mould Scion as an outlet for global Toyota products otherwise not offered. Scion could, for example, parallel Toyota Europe's lineup, and top it off with a larger model, such as Amphibian's suggestion, Mark X (which is actually the old Cressida's successor).