The Rally-Bred Toyota GR Yaris ‘Nice to Know It Could’, Fuelled by Amyl And The Sniffers

The Challenge

The GR Yaris is not a rational car.

Born from Toyota’s World Rally Championship program, it’s engineered for extremes most drivers will never encounter. The challenge wasn’t awareness or performance proof — it was relevance.

How do you launch a rally‑bred performance car in mainstream culture without turning it into a niche enthusiast ad, while still respecting the credibility of what the car can do?

The work needed to celebrate capability without prescription. Power without bravado. And speak to drivers who like knowing what their car could do, even if they never need to.

The Insight

Performance isn’t about use. It’s about confidence.

Drivers are drawn to cars with extreme capability not because they plan to push them, but because it’s reassuring to know the limits are there. The emotional reward comes from potential, not execution.

You don’t need to use everything — it’s enough to know you could.

That insight became the organising idea for the launch.

The Idea

HERO created Nice to Know It Could — a rally‑bred film that collapses everyday suburban driving and professional motorsport into a single, cinematic experience.

Shot across Williamstown and Parwan Ride Park, the 60‑second hero film treats daily errands as rally stages, escalating the ordinary into the absurd. Suburban roads morph into high‑impact stunts, including a seven‑metre‑high fast‑food drive‑through accessible only via a mid‑air jump.

The film never tells drivers to replicate what they see. Instead, it invites them to smile at the possibility.

Directed by Sam Walker of Exit Films and set to Hertz by Melbourne punk band Amyl and The Sniffers, the work pairs raw energy with genuine automotive credibility.

Media

The campaign rolled out as a fully integrated launch across:

• TV, BVOD and SVOD

• Cinema

• Digital, OOH and social

• Gamified environments and interactive content

• A behind‑the‑scenes content series designed to deepen GR engagement

Every channel reinforced the same idea — extreme capability, casually owned.

The Impact

Nice to Know It Could reinforced the GR Yaris’s position as a genuine motorsport‑bred performance car, without alienating everyday drivers.

The work cut through a crowded automotive launch landscape by re‑framing rally engineering as emotional reassurance rather than reckless aspiration, helping Toyota bring its GR brand philosophy into mainstream culture.

Launched into a market where GR Yaris demand has consistently exceeded supply, the campaign strengthened Toyota’s long‑standing perception of the GR Yaris as a highly desirable, hard‑to‑get performance car — one defined by credibility, confidence and restraint rather than hype.

The campaign also extended HERO’s creative partnership with Toyota’s GR portfolio, following international award recognition for previous work including the C‑HR Diamond Collection, winner of a Grand Prix at the World Independent Advertising Awards and Bronze at Spikes Asia.