• The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Friday, March 30, 2007 11 AM

In order to make its new Pino minicar appeal to young female consumers in Japan, Nissan Motor has purposely avoided focusing too much attention on the car itself. Instead, television and print ads portray the Pino as just one item--such as plushy animals, furry seat cushions and heart-shaped decals--in a collage of accessories.

The Pino pamphlet--designed to read like a comic book--shows a group of fashionable youths eating cupcakes and showing off manicured nails that match the Pino's star upholstery pattern. Nissan's strategy is to target a narrowly defined audience. The Pino, named after the character Pinocchio, is aimed at 20-year-old women who love all things cute. Nissan also sells the sportier Moco minicar, for professional women in their late 20s, and the more spacious Otti model targeting mothers in their early 30s.

The campaign is part of Nissan's big push into Japan's red-hot minicar market. Nissan has no plans to take its minicars to the U.S., however. Even the most minute new models in the U.S. have much larger engines than Japanese minicars.

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