Outdoor/Out-of-Home: Butler Shine Stern & Partners, MINI Cooper

Dec 1, 2008

With a brand as unique and customizable as the MINI Cooper, an out-of-home marketing campaign must be equally creative. Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners pulled that off and more with its "Motorby" campaign for the automaker.


    To generate both buzz in the MINI owner community and as much press coverage as possible, BSSP came up with a program that began with sending a special key fob to select MINI owners in Miami, Chicago, San Francisco and New York. As part of the package containing the key fobs, the owners were asked to go to the company's Web site and answer a few questions.

    Then the fun really began. Working with a company called Wavetrend, which specializes in radio-frequency identification tags and readers, as well as its OOH partners Daktronics, CBS Outdoor, Clear Channel Outdoor and OOH Pitch, BSSP developed an RFID-triggered system that read the special key fobs when MINI owners drove by and displayed a personalized message on large LED billboards.


    When a MINI owner such as, let's say, Steve, drove by the board on his birthday, the billboard would flash something along the lines of "Happy birthday, Steve."

    "This campaign generated so much buzz because it had never been done before," said Lynda Richardson, media director at BSSP. "For the first time ever, a person could drive by an outdoor board, and the board would send a personalized message to him or her. Because of its uniqueness, the press across the nation really picked up the story to marvel at its fun and mind-boggling capabilities."

    The high-tech wizardry also caught on with MINI owner groups and automotive-centric blogs. In total, the campaign directly led to 90 million media impressions across several platforms, including The Today Show, print vehicles Newsweek and The New York Times and Web sites MotoringFile.com and AutoBlog.com.


For more Buzz Awards Coverage coverage:
2008 Buzz Awards Winners
Millions Are Talking: Do you know who is creating the buzz?
Grand Prize Winner: McDonald's Brave New World
Event Marketing: ABC Domestic TV, Dr. Scholl's for Her
Online: Proximity Canada, Alka-Seltzer
Viral Marketing: Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, Adobe Creative Suite
Music: The Marketing Arm, AT&T
Outdoor/Out-of-Home: Butler Shine Stern & Partners, MINI Cooper
Print: Fallon Minneapolis, Sci Fi Channel
Radio: OMD, Visa
Reality TV: Mediavest Worldwide, Herbal Essences
Scripted Television: R&R Partners, Valley Metro
Social Media: OMD, McDonald's
Sports: Mediavest, Sprite
Wireless: Moxie Interactive, FOX Studios/Jumper
Integrated Campaign: Campfire, Verizon/a>
Public Relations: Coburn Communications and AARP
User-Generated: Catapult Marketing, Pedigree
Film/Movie: Davie Brown Entertainment, Mountain Dew
Buzz People's Choice Awards