Hasta La Ideas

A MINI office desk, MINI body art, a MINI cake and sandcastle – these are just some of the weird and wonderful creations by fans of the iconic brand paid tribute to in a new campaign. MINI UK has launched a campaign that celebrates its fans’ creative innovation and uses their own MINI creations as its central imagery.

Created by iris Worldwide, it brings the manufacturer’s ‘Not Normal’ tagline to the UK, celebrating the relationship British consumers have with their MINIs. It uses as its inspiration images created by fans, sourced by iris from various social media sites.

“We discovered that the web is full of images of people’s MINI creations – snow MINI’s, MINI chandeliers, knitted MINIs, prams, MINI lilos – you name it,” says iris executive creative director Shaun Mcilrath. “What better advertising could there be for a brand than the creative tributes people make themselves?”

All ideas were sourced online, with the agency tracking down 70 people that had produced particularly creative tributes. In some cases, the agency asked fans to recreate the images, or – as in the campaign visuals above – recreated or reshot them itself. The sand castle, for example, was re-built and shot on the same beach in Weston-Super-Mare.”The rule was, we wouldn’t create anything we hadn’t found online,” adds Mcilrath.

As part of the campaign, an online film asks the public to help it to track down further images and inventors, with consumers encouraged to join in by posting their images online, with the hashtag #MININOTNORMAL. It is also accompanied by a global TV advert.

With regards to the rise of user-generated campaign content, Mcilrath reckons “certain brands are more suited to it than others”. “These are iconic or inventive brands,” he explains. “Brands that inspire people. The MINI brand is all of these things. It makes a lot of sense for brands with passionate, creative fans to open up and involve them more.”

And if anyone knows the two blokes who made a life-sized paper red MINI Countryman, for what looks like a stag weekend in Amsterdam, adds Mcilrath, “we’d love to track them down”.

You can buy the August issue of Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe to make sure that you never miss out on a copy – you’ll save money too. Details here.