Toyota Brings Winter Adventure to Life With Turn Up
Toyota's Turn Up is a 2025 regional automotive film campaign created by Bay Area independent agency H/L, debuting during the California regional broadcast of Super Bowl LIX on February 9, 2025, and featuring Olympic gold medalist skier Jonny Moseley navigating Palisades Tahoe in a suite of 2025 Toyota vehicles to position the brand as the definitive driver of winter adventure in Northern California.
The campaign was developed for Toyota's Northern California dealers and anchored to a moment of genuine cultural significance in the region. Palisades Tahoe was marking its 75th anniversary in 2025, a milestone that gave the campaign a ready-made emotional hook beyond simple product demonstration. Toyota and H/L used that anniversary as a frame for celebrating both the mountain and the vehicles capable of reaching it. The 2025 Toyota 4Runner served as the primary featured vehicle, while the Tacoma, Tundra, and all-hybrid Land Cruiser all appeared in supporting roles, giving the campaign breadth across Toyota's truck and SUV lineup.
In the United States, regional Super Bowl placements have long functioned as high-impact local advertising moments, allowing brands to reach concentrated, engaged audiences within specific geographic markets. Toyota's choice to deploy Turn Up in the California regional slot placed the campaign directly in front of an audience with a demonstrated affinity for winter sports and outdoor recreation, particularly among the Northern California communities that regard Palisades Tahoe as a seasonal touchstone. Skier Connery Lundin also appeared alongside Moseley, grounding the film in authentic skiing culture rather than aspirational spectacle alone. The campaign's single film asset carried the full creative and strategic weight of Toyota's winter-season message for the region.
H/L is a Bay Area-based independent agency with a 34-year partnership with Toyota, according to reporting sourced from leadiq.com. That continuity of relationship shapes the strategic instincts behind Turn Up. The agency understood that Northern California's automotive buyer is not primarily persuaded by urban commute messaging. The region's identity is bound up in access to outdoor terrain, and Palisades Tahoe represents the premium expression of that identity for the Northern California market.
The strategic logic of tying Turn Up to Palisades Tahoe's 75th anniversary is precise. An anniversary campaign invites retrospection and celebration, emotional registers that naturally align with the sense of tradition and seasonal ritual that ski culture embodies. By positioning Toyota vehicles as the means of reaching that tradition — literally transporting skiers to the mountain — H/L converted product attributes like all-wheel drive and off-road capability into experiential promises rather than engineering claims.
The competitive context in the United States automotive market reinforces the sharpness of this positioning. According to roadgenius.com, Toyota Group's 2025 sales increased approximately 4.1 percent, reaching a global share of approximately 12.4 percent. Volkswagen Group's estimated 2025 global market share stood at approximately 9.7 percent, according to Tarantas News, and Hyundai-Kia represents a further competitive pressure in the SUV and truck segments where Toyota's 4Runner, Tacoma, and Tundra compete directly. In the United States, where outdoor lifestyle positioning has become a defining axis of truck and SUV competition, aligning with a world-class ski destination like Palisades Tahoe is a defensible differentiating move rather than a generic aspiration. The campaign speaks to buyers who have already decided that capability matters and who want confirmation that their vehicle of choice belongs in the places they love.
Turn Up was produced by Wolfhouse, H/L's in-house production studio, giving the agency direct creative control over every production decision from location to sound design. That vertical integration is not incidental to the campaign's character. Dallas Baker, Vice President and Executive Creative Director at H/L, articulated the guiding creative principle in the campaign announcement published on Hl Agency on February 10, 2025. Baker stated: "We're working with not only a world-class destination in Palisades Tahoe, but a world-class journey, in an all-wheel-drive Toyota." That framing — journey as much as destination — defined the film's structural approach.
Baker elaborated on the sonic dimension of the campaign, noting: "So, to fully capture that feeling of excitement people experience each ski season, we crafted an original piece of music as 'the soundtrack of the mountain.'" The decision to compose original music rather than license an existing track is a meaningful creative commitment. It signals that H/L and Toyota wanted Turn Up to feel proprietary to this landscape and this season, not borrowed or generic. Baker further described how the team incorporated the sounds of Toyota vehicles and the surrounding landscape to punctuate Moseley's and Lundin's skiing, weaving product presence into the sonic texture of the environment rather than separating vehicle footage from action sequences.
Jonny Moseley's casting as the campaign's central figure is both culturally and creatively significant. Moseley is an Olympic gold medalist in freestyle skiing, a distinction that carries immediate credibility within winter sports audiences in Northern California and beyond. His presence in the film does not function as celebrity endorsement in the conventional sense. He operates as a guide and a symbolic authority — someone whose relationship with the mountain is earned rather than purchased. Connery Lundin's inclusion alongside Moseley adds texture and suggests a community of skiers rather than a singular hero, which broadens the campaign's emotional address.
No verified third-party performance data for Toyota's Turn Up campaign, such as audience reach figures, brand lift measurements, or conversion metrics, is publicly available at the time of this writing. The campaign's results have not been disclosed by Toyota, H/L, or any attributed industry source. Clapboard Score for Turn Up is 60 out of 100.
Structurally, the campaign demonstrates meaningful strengths that warrant assessment on their own terms. The Super Bowl LIX California regional placement is an inherently high-attention context. Deploying a single, coherent film asset in that environment — rather than fragmenting the message across multiple executions — concentrates creative impact and minimises dilution. The alignment between Turn Up's narrative and Palisades Tahoe's 75th anniversary gives the campaign a timeliness that pure product advertising rarely achieves, connecting Toyota to a moment of genuine community significance in the United States market.
The original music strategy, as described by Dallas Baker via hl.agency, also represents a structural advantage. Custom sonic identity is more memorable and more ownable than licensed music, particularly in automotive advertising where sound design is frequently underinvested. The involvement of Jonny Moseley — a credentialled Olympic athlete rather than a generically aspirational figure — lends the campaign earned authority in the winter sports space. Where Turn Up leaves room for growth is in its regional scope. Concentrating the campaign within the Northern California market necessarily limits the addressable audience for what is a technically and creatively accomplished piece of automotive filmmaking. Broader deployment or a sustained content ecosystem built from the Palisades Tahoe footage could extend the campaign's working life and return on production investment considerably.
Toyota's Turn Up is a winter-sports automotive film created by Bay Area agency H/L for Toyota's Northern California dealers. It debuted on February 9, 2025, during the California regional broadcast of Super Bowl LIX. The campaign features Olympic skier Jonny Moseley at Palisades Tahoe and promotes the 2025 Toyota 4Runner alongside the Tacoma, Tundra, and all-hybrid Land Cruiser.
H/L, a Bay Area-based independent agency, created Turn Up for Toyota Northern California. H/L has maintained a partnership with Toyota spanning 34 years, according to leadiq.com. The campaign was produced by Wolfhouse, H/L's in-house production studio, with Dallas Baker serving as Vice President and Executive Creative Director on the project.
Jonny Moseley is an Olympic gold medalist freestyle skier whose credibility anchors the campaign's winter sports authenticity. Palisades Tahoe was celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2025, giving the campaign a culturally resonant regional milestone to connect Toyota's 4Runner and truck lineup to a meaningful moment in Northern California's outdoor sports calendar.
The 2025 Toyota 4Runner serves as the primary featured vehicle in Turn Up. The campaign also showcases the Tacoma, Tundra, and all-hybrid Land Cruiser. All four vehicles are shown transporting skiers to Palisades Tahoe, positioning Toyota's truck and SUV lineup as purpose-built for winter adventure in the Northern California and greater US market.
Toyota's Turn Up receives a Clapboard Score of 60 out of 100. The campaign earns marks for its high-attention Super Bowl regional placement, original commissioned music, and the credible casting of Olympic skier Jonny Moseley. Its regional scope within Northern California limits the addressable audience for an otherwise technically and creatively accomplished automotive film.
Turn Up positions Toyota vehicles as the essential means of reaching premier winter destinations like Palisades Tahoe. By crafting original music described as the soundtrack of the mountain and integrating Toyota vehicle sounds into the film's audio landscape, H/L ties product capability directly to the experiential rewards of winter sports culture in the United States.
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