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In our first of many collaborations with Subaru this year, we were tasked with creating a walkaround video for the 2025 BRZ to live on their YouTube and social channels. The BRZ isn’t your typical all-season, all-weather Subaru, so designing a video that could use the winter setting to our advantage was the main challenge.

We started the video in an urban backdrop, using downtown Toronto as our location. We thought it best to show the BRZ going from an urban to rural setting to demonstrate that it can be for both city driving and as a means to take fun road trips out to the countryside. Next we shot in Simcoe County and near Port Severn to get the rural backdrop and activity locations we were looking for. We were able to use the snowy conditions to our advantage, making the vehicle visually stand out even more.

We chose to target a younger demographic for this, casting actors in their mid-to-late 20s and designing the video to fit with how they might use the vehicle. With its simple through-line of a winter date turned romantic getaway, we feel that we successfully promoted the BRZ as a lifestyle-enabling and adventurous sports car capable of taking you anywhere, anytime.

In our latest collaboration with Toyota USA, we were tasked with creating a video for the new 2025 Tundra to live on our AutoGuide.com YouTube channel. To create an editorial content piece that could live on our channel while promoting the Tundra, we decided to lean heavily into the TRD Rally Package version of the model.

This special trim level was designed to pay homage to the rich history of Toyota Racing Development (TRD), so what better way to highlight that than by exploring that history? To follow-up to our successful “History of the Toyota Crown” project last year, we created a “History of TRD” video, once again starring Rutledge Wood.

But creating this video had plenty of challenges. It required a tremendous amount of research to source all of the archive footage, photos, and info to create the script and design the video outline. We dug deep into the facts and spoke to current and former employees to uncover the truest version of the history that we could, even uncovering some tidbits that haven’t been discussed anywhere else on YouTube!

When it came time to shoot, we also had to coordinate getting Toyota racing legend Ivan Stewart out for the project, and arranged to ship some of his iconic racing trucks. These vehicles are precious commodities to Toyota, so we had to be extremely careful with them.

That being said, once we fired up the trucks and started flooring them across the desert – as you’ll see in the finished video – the results were pretty spectacular.

This project was a long process to put together, but we’re very proud of the results and feel that it does the ongoing legend of TRD and its iconic figures justice!

In partnership with one of our parent company sites, Motorcycle.com, we worked with the folks at Destination Ontario to develop an entertaining ‘touring’ video featuring the Motorcycle.com (MO.com) editors. This was a break from our typical style of content as the piece would prove a lot more fluid and creative. It essentially turned into a pseudo-documentary / travelogue about the editors’ adventure across Northern Ontario, featuring 3 motorcycles they brought with them to review.

Since we are based in Toronto, we’re well-versed in filming on Ontario’s roads and highways and felt right at home showing them off. Since the editors were flying in from California, there was a lot of fun to be had in introducing them to Canadian iconography and having them interact with the locals. Of course, it also helped that we were filming this in the Fall, where Canada is arguably at its most scenic thanks to the changing colours in the trees.

The deviation from our typical style of video paid off, as it was well-received by the Destination Ontario marketing team and by our MO.com audience. Not to mention, it was an absolute blast to shoot. Hopefully we can follow up this video with more like it for Ontario and perhaps other tourism boards in future.

This Fall, we worked with both the Product Training and Marketing teams at VW Canada to develop high-quality dealer training and marketing assets for the 2025 Jetta and Jetta GLI models. This presented the unique challenge of creating footage that would work for both the more practical product training side and the dynamic, eye-catching marketing side. To do this, we scouted out a uniquely rustic studio location to provide a great backdrop for the static B-Roll, then took the vehicles out on location to some great country roads to capture exciting running footage.

It then came down to the editing. For product training, we focused primarily on the static footage and kept the videos more practical and toned-down to suit the dealer training side. Then, we cut the same footage into far more fast-paced promotional content for YouTube and social media marketing campaigns, delivering full-length, 30sec and 15sec cuts.

Working with a client for the first time always presents new creative challenges as we work to understand the client’s unique style and needs, and this was no different. But we feel that we took those challenges in our stride and rose to the occasion, delivering content that VW are extremely pleased with and hopefully cementing a great new partnership for next year.

Product Training

Marketing

To help Toyota tap into the market of off-road enthusiasts, we partnered with them to produce an epic and informative “How-To” video for the AutoGuide YouTube channel. Using expert overlander and YouTuber Nathan Mueller as our host, and filming in the wilderness of Idaho, we set out to make comprehensive beginner’s guide to one of America’s most popular off-road activities: overlanding.

And Toyota provided us with the perfect vehicle for this project, the 2025 4Runner Trail Hunter edition, a turn-key overlanding vehicle already kitted out with a number of accessory parts and mounting racks for additional supplies to be added on. We started in Nathan’s workshop in Boise, covering the basics of what you need to bring, then headed to the incredibly remote “town” of Atlanta, ID up in the Sawtooth mountains to shoot the rest of our scenes.

It was an epic adventure making the video, and thanks to the expertise of Nathan, we think we crafted an authentic beginner’s guide for people interested in getting into overlanding, all while promoting the new 4Runner as the ideal starter vehicle to do so.

When Toyota approached us to promote the 2025 Crown Signia model on AutoGuide.com, we did some research on the Crown nameplate and discovered a long and storied history going all the way back to the 1950s. The development of the Crown actually had a hand in developing some of the most popular nameplates in the brand’s history, from the Camry to the Corolla. So, we took this history and formed a narrative framework for our video.

To help set the stage, we travelled to Plano, TX and film in the Toyota Experience Center at Toyota HQ, where we could shoot with some of the old models on display. We brought on Toyota spokesman Rutledge Wood – former Top Gear USA host and TV presenter – as our host, and even managed to get a vintage Crown model to drive on Toyota’s test track!

It all culminated in an educational and entertaining content piece that was well-received by our viewers on the AutoGuide.com YouTube channel, while providing great context for the Toyota brand and why the Crown model is so important.

In another edition of our long-standing relationship with Subaru Canada’s digital marketing team, we produced this “walkaround” web commercial for the 2025 Forester for their channels. Shot over 3 days all across Southern Ontario, we used the Sony Burano and new and improved lenses to achieve a more cinematic look and feel.

We’re very proud of how the commercial came together, from both a visual standpoint and a conceptual one. As ever, we look forward to the next collaboration.

To provide media assets to Sailun Tires for their E-RANGE and T-CON products, we filmed both studio B-Roll and running footage of the tires and developed quick 30-second promos for them to use on their channels. In addition, we provided high quality stills and full-length B-Roll string-outs for future use.

To partner with Yamaha and create an evergreen piece of content for them to sponsor, we worked with the team at Motorcycle.com to prepare a 5-part educational series meant as a rounded introduction to motorcycling.

Hosted by MO.com editor Troy Siahaan and starring two California-based novices, Kevin and Rosslyn, this series was shot in Fall 2023 at a variety of locations, with each video focusing on a different aspect of motorcycling, from picking the right bike, to riding basics, to customization and maintenance.

The resulting series is a polished, well put-together piece of content that we hope will stay relevant for many years to come. As well as sponsoring the series, Yamaha products were also heavily featured throughout. The two new riders were genuine novices who took an introduction course and learnt the basics throughout the series, culminating in the track montage you see in the final episode.

In one of our biggest collaborations with Toyota to date, we travelled to southern Utah to film back-to-back projects for the 2025 Toyota Tacoma and Land Cruiser models. Following our winning formula that we employed with our 2022 GR Corolla project, we hired known Toyota reps to host these videos on AutoGuide.com’s YouTube channel.

Pro 4 champion and Toyota-sponsored racer CJ Greaves was brought on board for the Tacoma video, demonstrating to viewers the methods and best practices for driving over a variety of terrain using both the TRD Pro and Trailhunter trims of the Tacoma.

For the Land Cruiser, we brought in LC expert Kurt Williams (aka “Cruiser Kurt”) co-chair of Salt Lake City’s Land Cruiser museum, to host the video. Since not everything was known about the Land Cruiser at this point, we worked with Toyota on an “Ask Me Anything”, taking viewer-suggested questions from VerticalScope’s forum communities and basing the script on Toyota’s answers.

This was a very successful collaboration and further cemented our formula for these Toyota videos. We plan to work with Toyota on many more future partnerships to continue to bring great content like this to our channels.