Live long enough and you just might see an automobile that sucks up discarded plastic bottles anteater-style through its front and spits them out the back as recycled plastic bricks that can be used to build houses. That is, if a South African 10-year-old's concept for the Toyota Dream Car Art Contest ever comes true.
In the meantime, you can check out the Vine video that the brand created to animate Sumeeth Singh's idea below, along with the drawings and video clips for dozens of other finalists in the global competition on the microsite.
It's the eighth such contest the automaker has hosted since 2008, and this one netted some 600,000 submissions. For more than two months, Toyota has been posting a daily Vine based on a "Dream Car of the Day." So far it's put out more than 70 of 90 total finalists. The brand's packaging around each idea is especially impressive. Visual geeks may want to take a spin over to the site to check out explanations of the creative process for each Vine.
The concepts themselves range from zany and nonsensical—a banana spaceship car; a car that's small enough to drive around DNA strands; a fish with wheels—to clever and caring and conscientious—like Singh's, and a number of others themed around recycling, or generating water for deserts and fields and flowers, or helping people by bringing them food and books and ice cream.
Many of the ideas are animal-car hybrids. There's even a giant bird-car that swoops in over cities and sucks out all the air pollution. Basically, you know, a Prius.
In other words, children's imaginations are entertaining to beaten-down grownups because kids' minds are filled with fantastic ideas that aren't bound by any concern about what's actually possible. And Toyota's is leveraging that to great effect as marketing.
It's far from an unfamiliar dynamic. McCann Worldgroup and Wes Anderson did it exceptionally well for Sony Xperia back in 2012, and BBDO has built a strong AT&T campaign out of the endearingly ridiculous things that kids tend to blurt out. But if you have a lot of time on your hands, and get a kick out of this sort of thing, you might want to start wading through Toyota's whole collection.
And if you work at an agency, think about sourcing all your ideas from a bunch of 10-year-olds, and then just pay your adult staff to polish them up.
See more of the Vines below. Via Co.Exist.