Toyota’s New Matrix Site Dedicated to Asian American

Toyota dedicates a section of its Matrix Web site “The Director’s Chair” to Asian American cinema. The multimedia mini-site feature interviews with Asian stars, film reviews and events.

Toyota has been pushing Camry, Corolla and Sienna in the Asian market. I am happy to see a new entry Matrix, hoping Toyota would dive even deeper into Asian marketing. The idea of supporting Asian American is great. It is the buzz in the market, which I already wrote about.

After reviewing the sites, however, I was a little disappointed.

First, the content. The “eventS” tab includes archive of the Asian American Film Festival only. The festival certainly is not the only film event around town. What happens to the others?

How about Asian Indian Bollywood which currently produces the most films in the world? Yes, I understand Toyota has traditionally focused on Chinese and Korean markets. Asian Indian is not their core target group. But missing out Bollywood completely in an Asian American Film site doesn’t sound right, especially when the site is in English targeting Pan Asian American. It sends a negative message to the South Asian American.

If only Toyota made it clear that this was a sponsored site featuring Asian American Film Festival, it probably would be less offensive. You should not pretend to be bigger than what you are. If you are a festival site, be it; don’t claim to you could “bring the best of Asian American Cinema” to the users. The tag line is a little too ambitious and misleading.

Another turnoff is its lack of interactivities. The site is a one way communication. From what I see, the content will not grow. I wonder how you expect the audience engagement to grow in that case.

Lastly, the technology. The server needs more bandwidth. I was at some point felt like I was on a dial-up line. I also found some broken links and minor bugs. All these spoil the user experience.

I also visited Toyota’s Chinese site and was shocked to find scrabbled characters on the home page. One thing I don’t understand: why the site is in Chinese Simplified GB coding when the actual display is in Traditional Chinese? Toyota should consider using Unicode instead. It is the norm in most multilingual sites now.

Don’t get me wrong. I am really thrilled to see Toyota’s commitment to the Asian American market and its innovative ideas. I just couldn’t help to point out things that may improve the initiative. Toyota, moving forward.