Toyota most certainly isn’t broken, but that isn’t stopping executives with the company’s Torrance-based U.S. division and its ad agency from trying to fix it.

Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. has undergone a dizzying series of marketing and personnel moves in the last few months, as has agency Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles. To name a few:

Joe McDonagh, Saatchi’s executive creative director, left in January for Ogilvy & Mather, about the same time Saatchi’s Creative Director Cameron Day fled for GSD & M; in Austin, Texas. Toyota, meanwhile, appointed a new chief for its American division in April and shuffled several other top executives.

Toyota is launching three new models aimed at the youth market, which will be introduced starting this fall. Both Toyota and Saatchi & Saatchi recently created new divisions staffed with under-35 marketers to come up with campaigns targeting generations X and Y. And even the much-maligned “Everyday” tag line is getting tweaked.

This is the kind of reorganization that one typically sees when a big marketer is running into trouble almost like the overhaul that took place last year at Nissan North America Inc. and its ad agency, TBWA Chiat/Day Inc. But Toyota is no Nissan; in fact, business could hardly be better. Through April, vehicle sales were up 15.8 percent over last year. In 1998, Toyota sales were up 6.4 percent, compared to an industry average increase of 2.9 percent.

The problem for Toyota isn’t selling cars; it’s selling cars to the right people.

The median age of Toyota buyers is 46, according to Santa Ana-based automotive consultancy AutoPacific Inc. Compare that to the median age of Honda buyers, 37, and you see the root of Toyota’s problem.

“You’ve got to replace aging owners with younger ones for a brand to have a long-term future,” said Eric Noble, director of marketing with AutoPacific.

To Noble, Toyota’s situation is reminiscent to that of General Motors Corp. in the late 1970s. GM’s business was still booming, but younger and hipper consumers were starting to switch to cheaper, more reliable Japanese imports.

GM didn’t react quickly enough, and the rest is history. Toyota isn’t planning to make the same mistake.

Perhaps emblematic of the changes at Toyota is a simple gap between words. Ever since the “Everyday” tag line was launched in 1997, critics have blasted Toyota and Saatchi for an apparent grammatical boo-boo. According to Webster’s, the definition of “everyday” is “usual, common” not the sort of message Toyota was likely trying to convey. On new work, the tag line will be “Every Day,” reflecting the message Toyota was probably trying to get across originally that of cars with lasting value, that will work every day of the week.

Operationally, Toyota and Saatchi have created new units called Genesis at Toyota, and the Bomb Squad at Saatchi that work together to create new marketing programs targeting younger consumers.

“What we’re seeing internally is a corporate culture under some review,” said Genesis manager Scott Grant.

Genesis isn’t just charged with launching three new models a new Celica and an entry-level subcompact called the Echo coming out in October, and a two-door convertible called the MR2 Spyder that launches in March 2000 it’s trying to reinvent Toyota’s entire operational structure, from relationships with distributors to the way dealers interact with young consumers.

Genesis and the Bomb Squad are also looking at non-traditional marketing methods that are becoming more effective at reaching young buyers, such as the Internet.

None of this is to suggest that Toyota’s mainstream advertising will undergo drastic changes. It will still target boomers, and still focus on meat-and-potatoes reliability over sex appeal.

“It would obviously not make sense for us to communicate in a youthful fashion if it does not match the product,” Grant said. “Our intention is not to alienate (the traditional Toyota) customer.”

Noble believes Toyota is making all the right moves. He’s particularly encouraged by the appointment of Jim Press, former head of the Lexus division, as the top American Toyota executive in April, because he believes Press will bring with him some of the savvy that put Lexus on top of the luxury category.

While Toyota has succeeded by being a price leader with somewhat undistinguished product, Lexus has beaten the competition with a superior product, Noble said. That strategy might be just what is needed at Toyota, whose utilitarian products, Noble believes, are beginning to resemble toasters in the consumer mind.

“In the final analysis, consumers really don’t want appliances when they’re buying cars,” Noble said. “They want a product that’s as reliable as an appliance, but they don’t want it to look like an appliance.”

Sun rises on Deutsch

Way back on April 19, Adweek reported that SunAmerica Inc. had awarded its $10 million to $12 million advertising account to the Marina del Rey office of Deutsch Inc. At the end of May, SunAmerica finally put out a press release announcing the account change.

Why the delay? Apparently, the client and agency have been wrangling for more than a month over media-buying duties. Currently, media for SunAmerica advertising is bought by Western Initiative Media, which has already spent nearly SunAmerica’s entire marketing budget for this year.

At this point, Deutsch is handling creative only for SunAmerica. The media-buying contract for the year 2000 will be renegotiated in the coming months, though SunAmerica insiders say they’re leaning toward giving the whole thing to Deutsch.

That would be a nice little win for the agency considering that the Century City-based retirement annuities firm is expected to boost spending next year in a marketing push following its acquisition by American International Group Inc. SunAmerica’s creative account was formerly handled by Asher & Partners.

News Editor Dan Turner writes a weekly column on marketing for the Los Angeles Business Journal.