It would probably be the last place you’d expect to see anything relating to rock climbing, but surely stranger things have happened in Times Square. This spring, Toyota aimed to put their new Rav 4 Hybrid vehicle front and center in New York City with a feat that has never been done before. The Rav 4 Hybrid was featured on a billboard with a 3D rock wall complete with live climbers. Not just anyone was allowed to scale the wall, there were a total of only three climbers, and the leader of the pack was professional climber David Morton, who has scaled Mount Everest a whopping 6 times.
Months of work went into the stunt that was timed to coincide with the New York International Auto Show. Patricia Turosz is the director of client partnerships at OOHA Wilkins, the agency that orchestrated the billboard. She said the billboard was the “tallest climbing wall in New York City and the first billboard of its kind in Times Square.” She coordinated the campaign with other agencies to coincide with other aspects of advertising for the Rav 4 Hybrid.
Turosz says the project took 6 months to get underway and hit several roadblocks in that time. She says, “first we had to find the right vertical space with a static board that could take 3D rock props and then we had to get an outdoor vendor who was willing to allow a person to climb its billboard.” She says the project was rejected by several large outdoor companies due to the risk involved.
It came down to the wire before finally coming to fruition. Turosz says a special permit from the city had to be obtained for the billboard, and that didn’t come through until 2 weeks before it was scheduled to go up. She says that was “nail biting time.”
The wall was 6,000 pounds and nearly 100 feet tall…it was only up for about 4 weeks, but needless to say, garnered a lot of views for the vehicle.