Agency/media operation

Gaggi Media Communications

Client

MINI Canada (a division of BMW Canada)

Brand

MINI

Budget

$3 million

Media used

Television

Out-of-home

Magazine

Cinema

Newspaper

Radio

‘Brandshaper media’

Timing

January to December, 2003

Media team

Mike Power, VP and account director;

Laura Gaggi, president;

Cindy Worsley, account planner/buyer;

Vilma Ditata, broadcast manager;

Kirk Glendenning, account planner and buyer, Gaggi Media Communications

The background

The decision came down on Dec. 23. Gaggi had won the business after an exciting review with BMW. Initial plans were needed by Jan. 15. The Toronto Auto Show was around the corner and sales were primed to get started.

The first task was to understand the way individuals buy cars and the process by which they seek out information. Specifically, the way a car gets on the radar, moves to the shopping list, survives the short list and finally gets purchased. Next we – meaning the client, media and creative – needed to understand who was buying the MINI. And even more importantly, who did we want to buy it?

MINI was in year two. It had already been successfully launched to the ‘cool’ set. High initial demand for the car had been met and sales goals for year one were reached.

We needed to expand the target, which we finally pinned as Opinion Leaders and Influencers, Coupe Performance (Under the Hood guys) and Modern Mainstream.

All the media chosen had to be reflective of the very cool, fun and mischievous prankster otherwise known as the MINI.

But without a true demographic in sight, the challenge was: how to plan effective media against a philosophical target group.

The plan

Using PMB, NADbank, MicroBBM, and existing MINI research as guides, we constructed a ‘lifestyle media plan.’ Demographic performance was used solely as currency in dealing with media, but terms like ‘adults 25-49, male skew’ had very little meaning in our plan.

We began by mapping out the typical day in the life of our target group. What emerged was that this highly urban target lived in a world of ‘soundbytes.’ They were highly active and interacting with media only when they chose to. We call these people ‘appointment-users’ of media.

Mapping out the individual lifestyle habits of our target, we realized the only chance we had at breaking through their short attention spans was by using a multimedia approach. Unlike selling cars to an older group, we could not sit back and rely on heavy levels of TV and newspaper advertising. Nor did we have the budget to do so. Our media needed to work in tandem with bold creative messaging and stand out.

All activities culminated in June, and so did the highest sales in MINI history. Media was not the only thing happening at that time, but it worked hand-in-hand with all other efforts to deliver a highly successful year.

TV

We exploited a mix of specialty and local market schedules, using :15 formats in the higher priced selective markets, which allowed TV to work harder. Great creative from Taxi broke through and allowed sustaining levels of TV to work harder than normal. TV provided big image and is the number one influencer on new car buying. We only purchased programming that fit the appointment style viewing habits and wannabe-cool nature of our target.

Outdoor

Handpicked ‘Cops Hide Here’ boards worked as hard as a 75 daily GRP campaign. Only a handful were used, but they were selected in high traffic and relevant locations to deliver an interesting message. Washroom ads in fitness clubs and hip restaurants and bars delivered the message in a very relevant environment, again securing the cool aura by being in only the right locations.

Magazine

Lifestyles were divided into ‘silos of interest’ – Maxim, Azure and Canadian Art, for example, all depicted the various areas of interest the MINI buyer indulges in.

Cinema

Around the time The Italian Job (which prominently featured the MINI) broke in theatres, DVD format pre-movie full-motion slides were introduced at Famous Players.

Brandshaper media

To round out this campaign and find ways to really capture this target’s interest, special installations were used in various formats, including ‘MINI in the Cage,’ which kicked off at the Toronto Auto Show and then travelled to the Vancouver and Montreal shows before doing a big tour of Toronto.

Costing the same as a superboard, this installation was so successful it was picked up in MINI countries around the world. We even put one in the Vancouver Airport – the first automotive company to do something like this.

In conjunction with the cage, MINI dominated Toronto’s Union Station at the time of the Auto Show. Taxi designed tire treads and transformed pillars into pylons to create excitement and draw people to the MINI booth.

Radio & print

Radio and print were used both corporately and at the dealer level. This was the hardworking retail media that drove those last groups of considerers into showrooms to go for test drives and ultimately purchase the car.

Radio was leveraged to the hilt to allow for dealer visits, live cut-ins from MINI events and ongoing partner-based promotion.

The results

What a year! MINI made budget. Media was planned and executed with careful attention to the target group’s usage patterns. Media became the message in some non-traditional applications that mirrored the very fun, hip and cool imagery represented by one of Canada’s greatest cars.

The judges rave…

‘This plan demonstrates the strength and impact of campaigns developed by media and creative teams working in unison. Lifestyle media plans that use traditional media target groups as a guideline and not a foundation, show the direction that media strategists should be taking.’

‘This plan made innovative use of media through research. They used the media to its greatest advantage and surrounded the target in impactful ways that allowed the message to stand out. They also seemed to have been successful in benefiting the brand – a danger sometimes when going so deep into multi media.’