Crafty Toyota

Via Faythe Levine’s blog comes word of YarisWorks, which is “a series of events and celebrations to empower everyday creativity and DIY ingenuity.” While “indie lifestyle community leaders in 12 cities across the country” will be involved, according to a press release reprinted on RedefiningCraft.com, the resulting events “are presented courtesy of Toyota’s stylish, fuel-efficient sub-compact, the new 2007 Yaris.”

The Yaris is a Toyota car aimed at young people, and I’ve actually been wondering about how it will positioned in relation to the Scion, another Toyota car aimed at young people. I guess will Scion is more sort of a DJ/street-art thing, the Yaris is more DIY. “The Yaris is all about celebrating innovation and making design more accessible,” a Toyota marketer says in the press release.

Helping out is DrillTeam Media, “a non-traditional marketing services firm” that helps its clients “access and mobilize independent, influential young tastemakers who are hard to reach and even harder to convince.”
It’ll be interesting to see just how hard it really is to convince the independent young tastemakers to let Toyota “empower” them. Faythe’s take: “This makes me feel a little sick to my stomach knowing that if corporations start doing there own fairs, who will come to us little guys’ shows?” Redefining Craft’s (sarcastic) take: “Party on and let the co-optation begin!”

That sounds like bad news for team Yaris, but we’ll see. According to one article I read last year on the subject of how artists should think about corporate sponsorship, “Selling out is more a matter of circumstance than any absolute rule. Sometimes it can be good.”

Of course, that article was in the Winter/Spring 2005 issue of Scion magazine.