Toyota is Hoping You’ll Be Their Social Network Racer [VIDEO]

Toyota's Social Network Racer

Thanks to Chiyo over on Asiajin for pointing out Toyota’s new Social Network Racer Facebook game/promotion. While I’m not personally a big fan of playing Facebook games, there’s clearly some strong potential for companies to use the platform as a way to spread brand awareness.

Perhaps even more than Comnico’s Puma Facebook game we mentioned the earlier in the week, Social Network Racer is game that encourages you to post high scores and share them with friends. But you can also earn in-game credits by sharing as well, which will likely give the game some potential to spread fast.

Toyota aims to use the game to promote its FT-86II concept model, and by playing you have a chance to win an invitation to the Tokyo Motor Show where the car will premiere. The company also has an AR iPhone application that lets users take photos of the car overlaid on backgrounds in their area. But the resultant ‘world report’ videos are a little silly with really bad, poorly translated narration. So we’ll have to give them a D- on that particular aspect of their promotion.

The Facebook game was fairly well executed though. Check out our quick video walkthrough below.