Great commercial? Yes? Misleading? Yes
It is no mistake that this commercial starts with the claim that 80% of Toyotas sold in the last 20 years are still on the road. Toyota’s brand is built on reliability and this seems to be the ultimate claim. Our cars last two decades.
So what’s my beef? My beef is that the average person is going to interpret this commercial as “If I buy a Toyota tomorrow it has an 80% chance of being on the road 20 years from now.” This is far from the truth and there are two main reasons why:
1.) Toyota’s recent sales far outnumber sales from over a decade ago. So what? So their percent on the road counts for much more when you are doing a weighted average.
2.) Combine point one with the assumption that nearly 100% of all cars sold in the last 5 years are on the road and you can get a hugely inflated number.
Lets just assume Toyota sold twice as many cars in the last five years as in years 16-20 and that 95% of cars sold in the last 5 years are still on the road. Lets also assume that the middle 10 years average out to 80%. What percent of cars sold in years 16-20 would have to still be on the road to make the 80% number?
Only 50%! A far cry from implied claim of 80%.
Huge assumptions made? Yes. Might this still be an impressive number? Maybe. I would have to see other manufactuers numbers to compare.
Even if my assumptions are far from accurate, file this as an example that shows how easily marketers can manipulate numbers and make claims that both appear to be and are too good to be true.
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