CASE STUDY: Mini launches first campaign in Indonesia

Background
Mini Indonesia was launched for the first time in Indonesia last year, and it picked The Campaign Palace Jakarta as its creative agency of record last month. This campaign is the brand’s first campaign in the country, and it uses social media and celebrities to engage with Twitter users.

Aim
The campaign aims to create a ‘what the hell?’ online buzz among Indonesians, establishing Mini as a brand with a "fun and cheeky" attitude. With the focus on social media and Indonesia’s love of celebrity, it creates a strong link with the Mini Countryman model and the brand’s overall “getaway” brand positioning.

Execution
Indonesian comedian Ernest Prakasa began tweeting on 13 January that he was trapped in a dark enclosed space. He then uploaded a video of himself onto YouTube, saying that he was locked in a container and appealed to the public via his followers on Twitter to help him to “getaway”.

The Twitter community reacted with shock, with even some calls to the police. As online buzz continued to grow, information was ‘leaked’ that this may be a marketing stunt of an automotive brand, which had then calmed the rising panic.

The campaign subsequently moved to the next phase, whereby Twitter followers were invited to submit their best ideas to help Prakasa to “getaway”. New videos were uploaded daily on the Prakasa’s blogsite, showing him in the container using different items that could help him to “getaway” while guided by followers’ suggestions. This was then wrapped up with three scheduled live-streaming sessions directly from the container where he acted out some of the ideas.

Two days before the big launch event, Prakasa ended the session by breaking into a wooden crate in the container and discovering what appeared to be a Mini inside. Prakasa then tweeted random photos of the car with descriptions of the vehicle.

During the launch event on 27 January, two weeks after being ‘trapped’ in a container, Prakasa finally “gets away” from the container in a Mini Countryman. Some 300 invited guests and followers from Twitter were invited to celebrate the launch of the Mini Countryman in Indonesia.

Results
The launch of the first viral video of Prakasa being trapped in a container generated 136 video views within the first 15 minutes, and subsequently saw more than 7,000 views in less than 12 hours.

Overall, the campaign achieved 15,642 YouTube views; 14,270 related tweets; 1,643 unique viewers to Blogsite; 180 unique interactions during “live-streaming”; as well as 12 related media and blog write-ups.