Your Mini Guide to Mostnificence

Background

MINI’s brand personality comes from the design of the car itself and the unique driving experience. It is cheeky and fun, intelligent and gutsy.

In every bit of communication, MINI needs to come alive.

Idea

The challenge for the agency was, how do you sell someone a new MINI that’s no different to the one they already own?

You certainly don’t bore them with all the usual waffle about cupholders, wheel options – or colours.

Instead, and because you know MINI drivers tend to have well-defined personalities and are smarter than average with a good sense of humour, you send them a book wrapped in what looks very much like a dead animal and you introduce them to Lars Hammerman.

He is  a hyperactive, superhuman Saskatchewan woodsman, who tells MINI owners how they can move from magnificence to a higher state of being known as ‘Mostnificence’ (which turns out to be most easily achieved by trading their current MINI for a spanglier new 2010 model…).

The whole surreal thing is packaged in some roadkill for the dust cover. And, the agency say, ‘Job done.’

Results

17% uplift in sales at year end. Over a third of recipients contacted their dealer. Mostnificent!

Our Thoughts

Only the Kiwis! When you first look at this you think how completely insane is that! But when you think about it, this is a brand that knows its loyalists well. It knows that they are up for a laugh. It knows that they are individuals who express themselves through their car, among other things. And this would have tickled them enormously. They would have known that you don’t get mailings like this from Volvo. They would have seen a few Ford brochures in their time and none of them would have been wrapped in faux dead raccoon.

Does humour work in direct marketing? Here’s proof of it. But you do need to be talking to people with a sense of humour. This idea would not have worked anywhere outside New Zealand. But then no-one outside New Zealand would have had an idea like this in the first place.