Mobile Magic: The Saatchi and Saatchi Guide to Mobile Marketing and Design

Chapter 17.2: Gentlemen, Start Your Smartphones: The Tori 500

Based on an interview with Alastair Green, Executive Creative Director Team One, Los Angeles

Sports Illustrated Magazine’s annual Swimsuit Edition is the Superbowl of print. For the past several years, our client Lexus has been the Swimsuit Edition’s main automotive sponsor, which means that each year we’re responsible for creating content that has to make a splash next to some of the most beautiful people in the world. We wanted to create something that was more than a print ad. And obviously mobile is an amazing place to play. As we were developing ideas for the Swimsuit Edition we realized that the one thing that people always have next to them—even more often than a magazine—is their phone. A magazine you have to put down to work on your laptop or your television. Mobile you never put down.

We knew mobile was something people would have next to them when reading Sports Illustrated. At Team One we’ve always been very heavily involved in the mobile space. We know how to reach our customers on mobile. And we’d known for a while that we wanted to bring Lexus as a brand onto the mobile space.

We had a lot of great data on Lexus customers that helped us make that transition. For one, we knew that (at that time at least) ...