The brand-new book 'Age Curve' by Ken Gronbach describes all of the generations of consumers in the United States. All of these these generations were at the recent Off Road Expo at the Pomona Fairgrounds for Toyota Motor Corp. where we had the chance to photograph them.
Each of the three generations currently consuming large volumes of product are: The Baby Boomers (1945-1965), Gen X (1965-1985) and Gen Y (1985-2010). Gronbach's theory is that demographic waves determine which consumer products grow market share, and which will shrink.
In the case of the off road market, it turns out parts of each generation drive some sort of off road vehicle, either motorcycles (Gen Y), sand buggies (Gen X) and souped up trucks (Baby Boomers) that sell for up to $100,000. The only difference is, as you get older, you're buying more expensive toys, bigger trucks. The new Toyota FJ Cruiser is one of those toys, and Toyota Motor Co. uses affinity marketing techniques to support the car in this market with clubs and consumer expos.
'All we saw were Toyotas here, Toyotas there, Toyotas everywhere.'
They are a major sponsor of the Off Road Expo, supporting the program with their name, test drive program (yes you could drive a new Toyota FJ in the arena's off-road course) and of course an owners' hospitality area. If you came through their booth, drove one of their cars, visited a Toyota booth or owned one of their cars (just show your key) you can enter into their spacious hospitality suite for lunch, prizes, a live band and of course our special-effects photograph of guests driving an off-road racer high above a jump.
We used a photograph of one one of their sponsored trucks in mid air during a race, and set it up so that guests would be photographed driving the truck or sitting in the truck bed (like the photographs you see here.)
Their affinity marketing program was brilliant. We saw no Ford, General Motors or Nissan presence anywhere in the Off Road Expo. There was a minor presence by Jeep's manufacturer. All we saw were Toyotas here, Toyotas there, Toyotas everywhere. And everybody coming through the photo station kept telling us about how much they love their FJ Cruiser, and how many Toyota trucks they've owned in the past.
It was an interesting lesson in the power of affinity marketing and the crossgenerational market consuming off-road vehicles and the products necessary to drive through the wilds of the desert and the mountains all the way to the sea.
For our part, entertaining guests with a special keepsake photograph of themselves was a great success. According to our client, "Everybody loves their picture."
Now all we need to do is go to the local Toyota dealer and check out one of these new FJ Cruisers everyone's talking about.