Tag Archives: cars

Idea of the day: On to off to on. But with fire.

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I’m always a fan of things that make a literal link between the digital & real worlds, and this idea from Mini combines this link with everyone’s favourite element.

As we speak, a Mini Countryman is suspended on a stand at the Brussels motor show using a stout-looking rope. By ‘liking’ the Mini page on Facebook, you get one shot of flame to try and burn through the rope, and you can see this play out live. Whoever’s flame finally burns through, wins the car.

What’s nice about this above & beyond the execution is that it is traditionally quite hard to get anyone other than car geeks to care about motorshows, or even realise they are taking place. By using the Brussels show as a backdrop, Mini can serve some new model news from the show to people who wouldn’t otherwise have any time for it.

Video showing how it works below, or log on to Facebook and have a go – although be warned, there’s a bit of a queue..

Idea of the day: Tell an emotional story

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The single most powerful asset a brand can have is an emotional relationship with it’s buyers & owners. That’s why I’m typing this on a computer, but my girlfriend has an Apple. They are different things to the owners & users – I am unlikely to ever say I’m typing this on a Lenovo, because to me this just a tool.

Which is why I rather like this Chevy work. On one level it’s nothing spectacular: a pair of brothers reuniting their father with his long-lost 1965 Chevy Impala. But it is built around a really simple human truth: everyone loves their first proper car – and not because of the facts & figures, but because of the memories & journeys.

The restrained lightness of touch from the brand also makes a big difference – I suspect that required a lot of meetings to achieve..

Idea of the day: SoLoMo (part deux)

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Another nice SoLoMo execution today, which is actually a development of a previous campaign.

As they did to launch the Clubman in Stockholm, this year Mini are launching the Coupe with an enormous treasure hunt. This time it is across the whole of Tokyo (a ‘game’ area of over 240 square miles, 32x bigger than Stockholm).

Basically, using your smartphone you hunt down a virtual Mini Coupe. Once you’ve found it, you try and hold on to it because if another player comes within 50m of you, they can ‘steal’ it off you. This seems to require you to run frantically around the city, which given the levels of traffic in Tokyo looks likely to cause some kind of dreadful accident. If you can end the 9-day game still hanging on to the virtual car, you win the real one.

Still, lots of fun to be had for sufficiently athletic, unemployed people. I like the fact that it creates a real sense of event in the launch location – if this game gets picked up to the same degree as the Stockholm version, then there will be an enormous amount of buzz generated. They doubled the sales target of Clubmans last year in Sweden.

Warning – the video is deeply Japanese.

Idea of the (yester)day: a website made flesh

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Well, bricks.

For the launch of Toyota’s much-anticipated (by some at least) new coupe, the snappily titled FT-86, they’ve built the web’s ‘fastest painted website’. Another nice instance of ‘on to off to on.’

[Nerd aside: the name of the car harks back to a much-revered road/race car from 1983 called the AE-86. This is the sort of thing that happens when single men are allowed to run an entire category unsupervised.]

Possibly some translation issues here, but the concept itself is actually quite interesting. It’s a graffiti-style mural that incorporates things like a countdown to the car’s release at the Tokyo motorshow, live tweets & mentions, and the pleasingly low-fi addition of two flashing lights that produce a physical signal when someone likes or tweets online. The whole thing is constantly streamed via a webcam, and areas of it actually hotlinked so you can click on the car, etc.

Whilst the actual implementation may not be to everyone’s taste, there seems to me to be an interesting indication here of where digital outdoor, social & PR meet.

Have a go on it here: http://bit.ly/sYkF4k