Newly refreshed tradition

 
Automobil Christa Löpfe has designed and realized a new customer magazine for Toyota. 
"Welcome to the Toyota family!" This greeting was the core of the briefing for Philipp Rhomberg, CEO of Toyota AG, for his customer magazine. Christa Löpfe's media office was to give it a new form. The ideas of the former editor-in-chief of Annabelle were convincing. "Christa Löpfe's concept corresponded exactly to my idea of a professionally produced magazine," says Philipp Rhomberg happily. Löpfe returns the compliment: "I was lucky that the magazine concept and its implementation were approved and supported unchanged and without compromise."
Toyota's customer magazine has a long tradition. Walter Frey, who built up Toyota AG over forty years ago, was one of the first in Switzerland to have the idea of publishing a magazine specifically for his customers.
The "welcome" has been the program ever since. However, the language in the new magazine has become even more personal with the consistent use of the "we" form. "The content not only informs, it should also entertain, touch people emotionally and benefit Toyota customers. That's why there are no so-called lifestyle topics in the magazine that have nothing to do with Toyota. All articles are related to the sender or to life in, around and with the car," adds editor-in-chief Löpfe, who is also responsible for the production, organization and coordination of the magazine.
Well-known journalists such as Stephanie Riedi, Philipp Löpfe, Matthias Mächler and Katja Alves were recruited for editorial work. In-house at Toyota, employees provided input and contributions for their new customer magazine, in particular Mark Strähl, Head of the Toyota PR & Sponsoring department, and Press Manager Emanuel Steinbeck.
Löpfe also had a clear idea of the magazine's design. "I wanted to move away from the visual appearance of an annual report and towards a journalistic product." This was "adequately implemented" together with art director Chris Burkhard. Daniel Soldenhoff was responsible for the image processing and final artwork and Beatrice Mächler for the image editing. The proofreading was done by Text Control and the translations by Marco Gehring and Jean-Paul Scherer. The first issue was printed by AVD Goldach. Published twice a year, the Toyota magazine has a print run of 190,000 copies and is published in German, Italian and French. It can be ordered via
Andreas Panzeri