MINI's Non-Traditional Advertising

This weeks Autoweek (and it's sister publication Automotive News) has an article devoted to the profound success MINI marketing campaign has had over the past 18 months in the US. Here are a couple highlights:

Mini USA, BMW's entry in the growing compact sport segment, has turned heads with out-there advertising: the Mini posing perkily atop an SUV, or in the stands at a professional football game.

Jack Pitney, general manager of Mini USA, says the hot-selling small car from Great Britain will continue to use media, especially magazines and outdoor advertising, in a non-traditional way this year. The goal is to create a brand icon

Mini unveiled its “Let's Motor” theme without TV fanfare or conventional campaigns. Instead, marketers concentrated on three advertising areas: magazine, out of home and its Web site, Miniusa.com. Mini marketers want to attract opinion leaders and tech-savvy professionals who influence the vehicle purchases of others.

“We have to be creative in our marketing and look for clever ways to have $1 seem like $2,” Pitney says. “Everything we do has to reflect the unique, fun, cheeky nature of the Mini brand in a holistic, 360-degree Mini way.”

Mini wants to boost sales from 20,000 in its 10-month introduction period in 2002 to about 30,000 this year, using its exclusive 71-dealer network.

In the third quarter, the Mini will appear in 27 lifestyle and enthusiast magazines. By year end, it will be in 39 magazines, up from 23 last year. …Using a billboard series that also ran in magazines and on postcards distributed in the second quarter of 2003, Mini matched the cars with vehicles featured in TV programs of the 1970s and the 1980s. Those iconic cars included the Partridge Family bus, The Dukes of Hazzard's “General Lee,” Starsky and Hutch's Ford Gran Torino and Knight Rider's KITT.

Helping design edgy, feel-good campaigns, Mini brand advocacy partner Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Miami helped Mini win the $100,000 Kelly Award grand prize for innovative advertising on June 19. The award is given by the Magazine Publishers of America.

“It's an incredibly cluttered marketplace. Everyone is talking driving – ultimate driving machine, driven to perfection, drivers wanted. We wanted to convey that there's something special happening with Mini, and there's a better way to describe the driving experience,” says Kerri Martin, marketing communications manager. Martin came to BMW in 1997 from Harley-Davidson.

“As a niche brand, Mini can't afford to go to mass media (like network TV) and “they can't get enough share of voice to get any recall,” says Scot Eisenfelder , a partner at consulting firm Accenture…

“I think it's brilliant. My hat's off to them. They're breaking a lot of paradigms.”

You can read the entire article here.

The entire campaign has really been pretty impressive. My hats off to Crispin Porter + Bogusky for creating something so fresh and to MINIUSA for having the guts to go with it.