In 2017, Toyota launched the global communication campaign 'Start Your Impossible' as a testament to its commitment to creating an inclusive society in which all discrimination and barriers are eliminated, and in which all individuals can move freely without restriction - autonomy of movement is one of the noblest expressions of freedom. With this goal in mind and at the end of the same year, Toyota announced its global partnership with the Olympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee: through the values of sport, Toyota wants to promote a society in which every individual can face every challenge and overcome their own limits through willpower (that of athletes) and ingenuity, which provides increasingly advanced and environmentally-friendly mobility solutions.
It was the beginning of a long journey that, in Italy, saw the birth of a close collaboration between Toyota Motor Italia and CONI and CIP. A significant step was the creation of the Toyota Team, a group that includes prestigious athletes such as Beatrice 'Bebe' Vio, Paralympic fencing champion, Ivan Zaytsev, captain of the National Volleyball Team, Simona Quadarella and Gabriele Detti, both swimming champions, Ivan Federico, skating champion, Andrea Pusateri, Paralympic cycling champion, Ilaria Naef, WCMX champion, Arianna Fontana, Olympic short track champion, and finally Vanessa Ferrari, world champion of artistic gymnastics. Today Toyota launches ‘’, a new chapter in the global 'Start Your Impossible' campaign. These are extraordinary people who have courageously overcome a difficult challenge, physical or emotional, to become even stronger than before. With them, Toyota wishes to celebrate those who have the courage to “challenge the impossible” and who, in the face of failure or adversity, are able to be reborn stronger than before and, consequently, are a source of inspiration for anyone who comes across obstacles along the way: nothing is impossible if we really believe!
It is their scars that make these people unique: in the few months that separate us from the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics, Toyota Motor Italia will tell - in the first part of the campaign - the fantastic stories of 7 athletes of the Toyota Team, with a series of digital films, through the metaphor of Kintsugi - the ancient Japanese restoration technique that consists in repairing fragments of a broken object with gold, enhancing its fractures to make it even more valuable.
Each of them reveals how they have managed to overcome the most difficult moment of their lives, not only those related to sports. At the end of the story they will receive the symbol of the spirit of an Unbreakable, a drop-shaped sculpture, the Doroppu, made by Kintsugi teacher Chiara Lorenzetti.
But also 'Unbreakable' are all those who have gone beyond their limits and the rules of society to make the freedom to move a right for all. Toyota has chosen 7 people - the new Unbreakables - to tell their impossible stories: Alessia Guarnaccia, architect and inventor of the ecoplasbrick; Mattia Barbarossa, the world's youngest founder of an aerospace company; Giovanni Zappatore, inventor of the first 3D printed bionic limb; Marco Dolfin, Paralympic swimmer and orthopaedic surgeon; Daniele Regolo, founder of the first recruiting platform for people with disabilities; Silvia Bonomi, breeder of Sopravissana sheep; and Sofia Corradi, creator of the Erasmus programme.
The new Unbreakables will be the key members, together with the athletes of the Toyota Team, of a ‘digital contest’ live on a dedicated site, www.the-unbreakable.it. Users will be able to vote for their favourite “impossible” story until 31st March, for the one they consider the most moving. By participating in the final draw, they stand the chance to win a trip for two people to Tokyo during the Olympics.