Toyota Australia and Sesimi are marking ten years of partnership. Over that time, Toyota’s retail marketing environment has become more complex. Channels have multiplied, Local Area Marketing has grown in importance, and national teams face increasing pressure to maintain consistency across a large dealer network.
As the network expanded, so did the challenge of managing brand safe creative at scale.
A Ten Year Partnership
Ten years ago, Toyota identified a recurring issue across its dealer network. Approved national layouts were downloaded and then recreated by external agencies. While well intentioned, this introduced variation, unnecessary cost, and inconsistency with national brand guidelines.
National and local creative were no longer reliably aligned, and oversight became harder as campaign volume increased. Maintaining clear governance across such a broad network became increasingly difficult.
Toyota partnered with Sesimi to establish a more structured approach to creative production. The focus was on reducing duplication, improving control, and ensuring dealer marketing activity consistently reflected Toyota’s national brand direction.
Centralising Creative Operations for a Network
Toyota adopted Sesimi’s Digital Asset Management systems and Creative Automation capabilities to address these challenges. This shift improved access to campaign materials and reduced friction for dealers, while giving national teams clearer oversight of creative usage.
The network moved away from manual asset recreation toward a more reliable and governed workflow. Toyota established a central location for approved assets and brand materials, supported by brand safe templates that enabled efficient local content creation.
Together, these changes created a single source of truth for marketing. Dealers worked from materials that always reflected national brand direction, while Toyota retained confidence in how creative was being used across the network. The partnership also supported closer collaboration across Retail, Brand, and Dealer Operations teams, enabling local execution without compromising brand control.
“Sesimi has supported our Local Area Marketing workflows for many years. The platform helps our teams and dealers produce consistent creative efficiently, which is crucial in a network of our scale.”
Enabling Local Area Marketing at Scale
Local Area Marketing plays a critical role in Toyota’s retail activity. It complements national campaigns and allows dealers to deliver timely, relevant content to their local communities.
Sesimi’s platform strengthened Toyota’s brand asset management system by giving dealers the ability to customise materials within defined guardrails. This approach supported hyper local execution without compromising consistency, enabling hyper local marketing at scale across a complex dealer network. National and local creative reinforced each other rather than competing for attention.
What A Decade Reveals About Creative Maturity
Long running partnerships offer insight into how large organisations evolve their creative operations over time. Toyota’s journey reflects a pattern seen across many enterprise networks.
Early stages often focus on access to approved assets. As complexity grows, attention shifts toward governance, template alignment, and campaign content approval systems. Over time, the emphasis moves to automation, compliance, online brand guidelines, and faster creative turnaround within a more mature brand management system. A consistent approach to Creative Automation helps large organisations protect brand equity while supporting fast moving Local Area Marketing.
“Over ten years our creative requirements have continued to evolve and Sesimi has adapted with us, helping our internal teams keep pace with the evolving needs of our network.”
Looking Ahead
Toyota and Sesimi continue to refine the creative operations that support the network. The focus remains on improving access to brand safe content, simplifying the production of Local Area Marketing materials, and providing Toyota’s internal teams and dealers with a clear and reliable foundation for their creative work.
The future will build on the same principles that shaped the partnership from the beginning. Clarity, consistency, and control remain essential as Toyota adapts to new channels, formats, and retail expectations.
If you would like to explore how creative automation fits within your content production workflow, book a short demo with the team.