A man is pushing a cart full of lumber along a dirt road that divides a beautiful panoramic view of the desert. Exhausted, the man sinks down in the sand behind the cart to take a break and eat a banana. When he finishes he tosses the peel. As the peel hits the sand the film flashes to a car on a highway skidding a 360 degree turn. The scene returns to the man sitting in the sand looking at the banana peel that rests on the ground before him as though he senses something has happened. The words “for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction” tie the sequence together. The commercial concludes with a narrator revealing Nintendo DS with a wi-fi connection.
Credits
Agency: Leo Burnett Ned Crowley and Jonathan Moore, group creative heads; Bill Stone and Dominick Maiolo, executive creative directors; Vince Cook and Gary Fox-Robertson, creative directors; Nate Zuercher, art director; Vinit Patil, copywriter; Sergio Lopez, senior producer. Production Company: Rock Fight Ben and Joe Dempsey, directors; Antonio Paladino, DP; Ned Brown, executive producer; Lindsay Turnham, producer. Shot on location in Barcelona, Spain. Editorial: Whitehouse Post Productions, Chicago Meg Kubicka, editor; Lisa Long, executive producer. Postproduction: Method Bob Festa, colorist Visual Effects: Asylum Visual Effects David Hofflich, executive producer; Darcie Tang, producer, Ryan Merideth, coordinator; John Fragomeni, FX supervisor; Simon Cassels and Tony Meister, designers; Mark Renton and David Crawford, Inferno artists; Steve Vojkovic, Smoke artist; Sean Faden and Rob Stauffer, CGI artists; Mike Lori, matchmoving; Jeff Werner, CGI producer. Music: Amber (Hea
Toyota, Burrell, Director Paul Hunter and Jim Henson’s Creature Shop Prove EV Skeptics Wrong In “Haters Anthem”
Toyota and Chicago-based agency Burrell have launched the Toyota BEV Family Campaign: a series of spots that follow electric vehicle skeptics as they’re won over by the bZ, bZ Woodland, and C-HR, one by one.
The campaign’s hero spot, “Haters Anthem,” opens on three skeptics portrayed as puppets, each one doubtful and vocal about it, who are converted into Toyota BEV believers after getting behind the wheel. When they convert, the puppets transform into their human selves.
To build them, Burrell partnered with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, which designed and built five custom puppets over six weeks, each with intricate mechanisms for unique arm and foot movements. A dedicated hairdresser ensured curly locs, fades, and twists were executed precisely and matched across both the puppet and human versions of each character. An all-Black puppeteer team, led by puppet captain Raymond Carr, handled performance and choreography throughout.
The work was directed by Paul Hunter via production house PRETTYBIRD, with “Haters Anthem” by Infinity Song, a four-sibling soft rock band signed to Roc Nation.
Burrell’s creative is grounded in a real audience insight: Black consumers have been underserved by the EV category, and nobody has built a campaign that reflects their vision of what electric driving looks and feels like. This one does. The humor, the music, the puppetry, and the transformation are all in service of a single idea: get someone skeptical behind the wheel, and let the car close the deal.
“There’s a thin line between a skeptic and a hater, and we leaned into that energy instead of away from it,” said Tara DeVeaux, CEO of Burrell. “The puppets give us permission to be honest about the doubt, and the... Read More
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