THE CHALLENGE

In the wake of 2011’s devastating Hurricane Sandy, many companies were offering assistance in the best way they knew how – by writing checks.  Toyota, a company with deep ties to the affected communities, wanted to maximize the effect of it’s own philanthropy.  Rather than a one-time donation, Toyota’s challenge was to create lasting change, so that the communities and local agencies would be able to recover faster and be better prepared for future emergencies.

THE SOLUTION

For years, Toyota’s has been sharing it’s legendary production system TPS, to non –profits to help them be more effective.  After Hurricane Sandy, Toyota sent production experts to work with local food banks to see how they could improve their distribution systems.  A documentary film crew was hired to record the progress and local and national bloggers were enlisted to get the word out.  As the program entered its final stage the documentary was released online and a participation mechanism was developed that would donate the cost of one meal for every view of the film.  

THE RESULTS

Within 24 hours, the film rocketed to the front page of youtube, was voted #1 video on Reddit and was picked up by national news networks like CNN and Huffington Post.  The total number of earned media impressions is estimated at more than 100 million in the first 48 hours alone.  Best still, because of the unprecedented response, Toyota increased its donation to one million meals. Best still, Toyota established a new model for corporate philanthropy – “do more good by sharing what you’re good at”.