• by Karl Greenberg , January 7, 2011

Mini is launching a campaign that starts with 3D in-cinema ads and ends with a social media push. And it all has to do with a form of automotive transport that might be the very antithesis of Mini -- monster trucks.

"Mini vs. Monster" puts BMW's division in a stadium as props for one of the gigantic pickup trucks to traverse. The film, via Amsterdam-based BSUR, takes place in a Las Vegas stadium, where a huge crowd of rowdy monster truck fans suddenly goes quiet when the truck starts over the cars. In slow motion, the crowd rises, dropping whatever they have (hot dogs, drinks, etc.) in amazement, as the truck skims above a Mini Cooper Convertible, Cooper Clubman, Cooper S and Cooper S Countryman.

But viewers won't know if the truck actually succeeds in jumping over the Minis. A Facebook takeover from Jan. 12 to 14 will have characters from the film in an online "soap opera," wherein each day Mini will have each of the film's main characters appear on the Mini Facebook page. The truck's driver will show up as host each day, showing 10-second teaser videos from different characters' perspectives, and chatting with fans.

Jason Schragger, executive creative director at BSUR, which is Mini's global AOR, tells Marketing Daily that the idea of doing a 3D monster truck-centered campaign with an online denouement evolved from a discussion about Mini's growing product line. Once just a single model, it is now a portfolio four models wide -- the latest being Mini's first SUV. "There have been upgrades to every model including the Countryman, so we sat around a table and discussed how to show the entire family. That's how the idea came up," he says. "What we wanted to show is that there is a Mini for everyone."

The campaign launches in the U.S., Germany and Italy, then other global markets, according to Schragger, who says the U.S. isn't the only market where monster truck events have avid followers. "It is very American in terms of how we shot it and the people in it, but when we spoke to English, German, even Japanese people, they loved it. And they all have monster truck events, which was a big surprise to me. There was even a Monster Jam in the Netherlands recently."

The teaser ads on YouTube make fun of the ironic global appeal of monster truck events, which are gladiatorial affairs in big stadiums where the four-wheeled behemoths jump over cars, pull huge loads and otherwise act out: one of the teasers -- which show people dropping everything to see what happens on TV, where presumably the truck is jumping the Minis -- includes one of a Japanese family on a couch watching in slack-jawed amazement as the announcer details what is happening onscreen. He says the creative elements will be linked tactically to car-specific content. "There are bookends focusing on each car that will run on TV as well."

Schragger says that to a certain extent, the hyper-visual nature of the campaign reflects the exigencies of speaking to a polyglot audience. "It's quite difficult when you do global advertising. It's all sort of image-based, and that's one of the challenges. You have to tell the story without words as much as possible, so it's great to pick things like monster trucks where people can get absorbed in that world without words needing to be said."

UK-based social media/PR agency Renegade Media created the Facebook and blogger outreach campaign to engage fans around the launch.