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Collect Action Cards throughout the game. Some cards help you, while others effect your playing partners. The Mini Brands leverage three trends that rival toy companies were already capitalizing on: collectibles, surprise unboxings of small toys, and nostalgia. The brand moved between a series of British owners (see timelines, above), ending up at Rover Group prior to its acquisition by BMW. Today, most Minis are still made in the UK at a factory in Cowley, Oxfordshire and new models incorporate multiple design elements that speak to the car’s earliest iterations. For example, the new Clubman features horizontal double-doors on the boot in the same fashion as the 1970s version of the model.
Zuru’s twist on the food miniatures idea was to make exact replicas of the supermarket brands, down to the nutritional information and the bar codes. There must be something special about a brand if it can pass between six different owners in half a century and still be described rightfully as ‘iconic’. In the case of car brand Mini, that special attribute is its ability to reinvent itself. The zeitgeist in 2001 was that we had just entered a new millennium and people were jumping into that with a lot of energy,” remembers Schwarzenbauer. “People were very willing to question conventions and the new Mini really hit right at the heart of that.” Mini plans to create separate identities for its five “superhero” models including colour schemes and aesthetic concepts There had been plenty of earlier examples of toy companies using supermarket products in kid’s playthings, said James Zahn, deputy editor of the Toy Book, and senior editor of the Pop Insider. And that has huge commercial potential for so many adult consumer brands looking to expand their market.Lengning insists that despite this downbeat approach, Mini has not lost its gregarious, edgy character. This is due to reappear in some of the advertising for its other models as it rolls out in the coming years, he says. For example, the John Cooper Works – Mini’s sporty performance vehicle that accounts for around 5% of sales – would appear to lend itself to a more ebullient tone of advertising. Alongside this new brand strategy, Mini is diversifying its approach to customer engagement by embracing the emerging ‘sharing economy’. At the Clubman launch in Berlin, the company announced that from now on it will automatically offer new customers the option to enter their car into BMW Group’s car sharing service DriveNow. The new brand identity will debut in advertising for the Clubman when the model goes on sale in October. A preview of print and outdoor ads shown at the launch event reveals a more sparse, sombre presentation in comparison to recent Mini campaigns, such as ‘Not Normal’ in 2013. The Clubman is simply photographed against a hardwood floor in an old industrial building as light streams in from a glass roof, with minimal copy underneath. Mini Brands turned out to "have this incredibly emotive connection with people," said Zuru CEO Anna ... [+] Mowbray. Zuru
Zuru's miniature grocery store items have gone viral on Tik Tok, with videos featuring the toys ... [+] viewed more than 1.6 billion times. Zuru Heavily branded children’s toys aren’t new. In 1994, Mattel released a Barbie McDonald’s Restaurant Set, complete “with talking drive-thru” and miniature menu boards. Around the same time, ride-on toy cars for children became popular, and BMW, Jeep and Mercedes-Benz wasted no time slapping their logos on plastic bonnets. Daniel Cook, a professor of childhood studies at Rutgers University and author of The Commodification of Childhood, says: “Consumerism has been a part of children’s lives for as long as there has been modern consumption,” roughly since the mid-1800s. He references Victorian artist Kate Greenaway’s picture books of the 1880s, which had a tie-in line of clothing for girls produced by Liberty of London. He also points to Campbell’s Soup’s range of dolls, first sold in 1909. Over Skype, seven-year-old Ava, from the west coast of America, plays with her Mini Brands and Shopkins. Her favourite Mini Brand is Bosco chocolate syrup, because she likes eating it in real life (she doesn’t like the strawberry syrup toy because she doesn’t like strawberry syrup). “I like how the boxes look real,” she says.
MINI THRILL MAXIMISED.
In all sectors, digitalisation changes things and you have two choices: you just ignore it, which in my opinion is not a good idea, or you start playing with it and really shape the future. That’s what we’re doing,” says Lengning. The Mini heritage According to author Simon Garfield, humans have always been drawn to tiny things. In his 2018 book In Miniature: How Small Things Illuminate The World, Garfield explains that minis both educate and excite us – “The miniature world embraces control,” he writes, arguing that children who play with miniatures get a taste of adult power.
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