A Different Kind of Customer Story

We tend to think of customer story marketing as case studies with real people and real results. But what if we widened that lens?

This campaign from Toyota North America is not a case study. It’s not even real. It’s fictionalized. It's stylized. But it’s still deeply rooted in customer insight: young, bicultural Latinos navigating identity and ambition. The actors are stand-ins, but the narrative is aspirationally true.

They’re telling a future-facing customer story. It's a portrait of who they want behind the wheel. Not who’s bought in already, but who they’re designing for, speaking to, and literally building toward.

Maybe I’m overthinking it and this is just another well-produced ad with familiar beats.

Or maybe…it’s something deeper? A kind of aspirational customer story that pushes how we think about customer marketing itself.

If so, here’s my question:

Should production companies that produce a lot of traditional client customer stories be encouraging their clients to think more like this?

Shout out to Marketing Report World. Their article sparked this line of thinking for me.