MINI uses playful topical messages to drive engagement and conversation with its audience.

1. Executive Summary
All MINI’s communications express the fun and playful nature of the brand. This tonality runs
through all of their creative perfectly placing the brand to take advantage of topical messaging.
2013 saw MINI run topical creative, focusing on the horse meat scandal and George Osborne’s
2013 budget.
The reactive nature of Newsbrands enabled MINI to communicate with their audience in a fun
and topical manner while news stories were developing.
Strong engagement with the creative across Facebook demonstrated the campaign drove
conversation and engagement with the MINI audience. As well as driving impact and relevancy
through a strong Newsbrand environment.
Background and Objectives
MINI want to communicate that buying a MINI is more fun than buying any other car; the
development of the MINIstry of finance has seen MINI run finance creative which enables them
to build their fun brand image within a market full of dull finance adverts. MINI messaging
through the MINIstry is playful, friendly, interesting and different to the rest of the category.
Newsbrands enable MINI to use this playful tone to react quickly to topical stories within Q1,
such as the 2013 budget and the horse meat scandal. MINI have used these stories as an
opportunity to have a point of view within current culture expressing their fun tongue and cheek
personality.
The short turnaround times of the print element of Newsbrands allowed for MINI to place
topical creative in either standout placement or relevant content.
Creating a splash and making the MINI brand famous. This in turn enables MINI to engage with
consumers across the purchase cycle not just at the end.
Insight and Strategy
Newsbrands still very much drive the agenda for current news stories; MINI has capitalised on
this to drive their fun brand messaging of the MINIstry by the placement of adverts containing
topical and sometimes controversial content within attention grabbing placements in a
broadcast media.
Working closely with MINI’s creative agency Iris, we quickly reacted to secure premium
placements within National Newspapers, capitalising on topical national stories with relevant
copy, while the story was still fresh and relevant within Newsbrands.
MINI initially saw strong engagement with the horse meat creative posted on social media (15th
February), the reactivity of Newsbrands enabled us to build on the conversation further running

2. display activity 16th
and 17th
February. Demonstrating that both reactive medias are well placed
to work together.
This strategy was implemented further with a social post and tactical ad placement 21st
March
with MINI spin on the 2013 budget announcement.
The Plan
Display advertising was placed within the Quality and Mids, with the view to secure premium
placements where possible, keeping in line with our 1st
in format 1st
in category strategy for
MINI.
OBC placement was achieved where possible for the Horsemeat creative (see appendix). A
tactical budget message was also run within the FT budget report; this ran as running as 1st
car.
Large formats within standout positions ran across national press, to ensure strong incremental
coverage against our target audiences (see appendix)
The reactive nature of Newsbrands meant that we were able to implement the activity quickly,
while the stories were still developing, further building on conversations across social media.
This enabled MINI to run tactical messaging in the same theme as MINIstry of finance Q1
activity, making the campaign feel reactive and current to the consumer driving their playful,
friendly, interesting and different messaging.
Results
The main objective of this element of the Q1 campaign was to drive conversation and build on
the fun messaging of MINIstry of Finance. This was demonstrated through strong engagement
within MINI UK facebook page, showing positive engagement and interaction with the creative.
The below figures show the level of engagement achieved
Horsemeat copy
 4,476 likes
 269 comments
 1,789
Budget copy
 307 likes
 53 Shares
 9 comments
This campaign would not have achieved the impact or relevancy in any other media, the entire
success of this campaign was built on serious high reaching news environments with immediate,
relevant and topical messaging. To run anywhere else we would have had to sacrifice on at least

3. one element. Demonstrating Newsbrands are a great vehicle for clients who want to place
reactive/ tactical messaging as well as allowing them to do this in a broadcast way.