Today’s San Francisco Chronicle features a story on the recent three way competition to fill the gap left when the Crispin Porter + Bogusky ad agency left MINIUSA to take on the much larger Volkswagen of America account. The competition lead to the selection of Butler, Shine, Stern, & Partners by MINIUSA to help shape the future branding of MINI.
What follows are some brief excerpts from the article that give some hints as to the general direction that Butler, Shine may take with MINI’s advertising and branding in the U.S..
“It is basically about the evangelical community of owners (of Minis) and creating technological platforms that recognize those owners and allows them to do what they do — which is be evangelical about the brand,” Stern said. He said the agency’s pitch to the company was titled “Evolving the Mini brand without screwing it up.”
Butler, Shine’s proposal “showed a great sense of community, and the Mini is a very community-oriented brand,” she said (Trudy Hardy, the Mini USA marketing manager).
In August 2004, the agency produced advertising using consumer-generated content for Converse shoes.
People were invited to make their own 24-second home videos about anything, inspired by the Converse brand, some of which were incorporated into commercials. These tiny films, with six-second tag lines and images of Converse shoes at the end, can still be seen at www.conversegallery.com.
“We were particularly impressed by the work that (Butler, Shine) had done for Converse,” said Mini USA’s Hardy. “Asking customers to submit their own films for potential use in advertising really invited them into the brand. Our customers share that same sense of brand ownership.”
Sounds like they’re on the right track.
I’m glad they aren’t going to just copy what C,P&B has done. It’s good to move on and using the MINI commuity shows great insite into the brand.
What a relief they’re not viewing it as something broken that need to be fixed or a “fresh” approach or something…I like the thought that they don’t want to “screw it up”.
Sounds fine, but as someone who wears Cons all the time, I msut say I have no idea what advertising these guys have done for them. Is that a good thing?? The 24-second home video idea doesn’t overwhelm me, but what the heck…I wish them success.
Does anyone know whether BSSP will be doing actual PRODUCT advertising vs the almost completely BRAND oriented advertising that Crispin Porter produced? In other words will they advertise the actual cars vs the MINI name? I’m not knocking Crispin Porter, their ads were very unique and interesting but don’t really tell anyone much about the cars themselves.
gokartride,
check out the spots at <a href="http://www.conversegallery.com" rel="nofollow ugc">http://www.conversegallery.com</a>
Craig,
My guess is we will continue to see branding. WIth the budget that MINI USA puts towards advertising, that’s going to be their best bet. Not to mention that, IMHO, most americans are more concerned about the brand than the features.
Finally, there’s just way too much about the car itself to do it justice in 30 seconds. That’s what the website is for.
Mike
Does it really matter what the content is if MINI doesn’t buy any media time? When is the last time you saw a MINI commercial on TV? I haven’t seen any this year.
In print media. the pull-out traffic tickets a few months ago, and the counterfit MINI bill-boards seem to be about it for this year.
If MINI doesn’t use what the agency does, doesn’t seem like it matters whose stuff they don’t use . . . 😉
Just because some moron with a video camera makes something for your ‘brand’, that doesn’t make it GOOD. I happened to LOVE the MINI’s marketing over the past several years…I don’t want to see some stupid tart in her lime green jumpsuit talking about “OhmygodtheMINIisjust, like, theperfectcarforme!” I hope they realize that we are an entirely different set of people than the typical Converse buyer (hmmm…are we? All I know about Converse ads is that they annoy me…especially the newer ones with all the animals).
I think there are mistakes all around here…the previous company chased the bucks to VW, how could they not? But VW is hoping to capture some of that magic the agency helped communicate about MINI…but their product has moved up in price, down in quality and away from their core customer base (who are more like MINI people, possibly).
We’ll see how it goes, I guess!