Gas Station TV and Toyota Team up to Launch 'Prius Neighborhood,' the First-Ever Community-Generated

This sounds.... interesting. Gas Station TV and Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., today announced the launch of "Prius Neighborhood," a first-of-its-kind TV program on Gas Station TV. The community relations program broadcasts consumer-generated local events and cause listings on at-the-pump screens while informing viewers about the new 2010 third-generation Prius. "Prius Neighborhood" starts airing today. It is easy for people to submit their local event details for potential airing on Gas Station TV. The Prius Neighborhood daily segments direct people to http://event.gstv.com. Once the local event information is submitted to the Web site, it is reviewed and built into the local events listing rotation at the pump and becomes searchable by zip code on the web site. Through the campaign's social media community integration, the events are posted to corresponding regional Twitter pages @GSTVevents, giving local drivers yet another channel to find out about local events. In addition, Facebook users can become fans of Prius Neighborhood, post new events, view posted events, interact with others and link to the event submission page through a custom-developed Prius Neighborhood application which can be added as a tab on users' profiles. "Our Prius customers are very involved in their communities," said Kim McCullough, corporate manager of marketing communications for Toyota. "For the launch of the third-generation Prius, we wanted to give them an innovative tool to help promote the philanthropic and community events they're passionate about." The Prius Neighborhood 30-second TV segments and consumer-generated local event segments will be watched by more than one million unique drivers a day. Complementing the Prius Neighborhood content segment, Toyota will run 15-second Prius spots and other Prius content. "This is one of the first demonstrations of the next generation of social media marketing campaigns - a TV/social media hybrid," said David Leider , CEO of Gas Station TV parent company Destination Media. "Today, social media is limited to reaching you via your PC or your Smartphone - essentially, 'computer to computer.' GSTV's proprietary Neighborhood platform is a game changer because it shifts and expands the flow of dialogue, enabling people to now inform TV content - 'computer to TV.'"