Urban legends about creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster abound the world over, and now Miami agency Crispin Porter+Bogusky (CP+B), Miami, and Mini Cooper bring to life a new legend as part of a viral campaign for the car. Starting on the Web and connecting to print and billboards, Mini’s "Men of Metal" campaign presents a fictional scientist who creates out of Mini Cooper parts a robot that comes to the aid of motorists driving around Oxford, U.K.
When it comes to establishing the Mini in the U.S., CP+B is no stranger to unconventional marketing ideas. For instance, when the popular U.K. car was being introduced to the U.S. market, the Mini was driven around cities atop a large SUV, and modeled to look like a kid’s ride at shopping centers. This latest effort is meant to build buzz for the brand with a series of Web sites, a fake book excerpt in national magazines, and billboards.
The campaign centers on the fictitious Dr. Colin Mayhew, who works for Mini as a parts engineer in the Oxford area, and is creating a robot comprised of excess Mini parts. The development of his robot is chronicled on the Web site www.r50rd.co.uk/research/internal/v2i/engin, which features Mayhew testing the robot’s parts. Another site, http://uk.geocities.com/colinmayhewphd, provides a thumbnail biographical sketch of the good doctor.
The book excerpt that ran in magazines was supposedly from a forthcoming nonfiction book called Men of Metal, written by a fabricated journalist named Rowland Samuel, and published by Casson Publishing, a non-existent U.K. company. The book, actually written by CP+B copywriter Bob Cianfrone, details how Samuel came to hear the story of the robot made of Mini parts, and how he tracked down people who had encountered the machine when they were in need of automotive help. As part of the campaign, CP+B created a Web site for the publishing company, www.cassonpublishing.co.uk, as well as a site for Samuel, www.members.lycos.co.uk/ rowlandsamuel. Rounding out the Web portion of the package is a site with the address http://uk.geocities.com/ oxfordsightings, which features images of the robot roaming around Oxford.
None of the sites link back to the Mini site, and there is no consumer interaction with Mini. The robot, meant to seem 15-feet tall, is a CG creation from Zoic Studios, Los Angeles, and the video footage of Dr. Mayhew was actually shot in a Miami warehouse. Mayhew is played by Sir John Samuel, an engineer from London and the father of Rupert Samuel, CP+B’s co-director of broadcast production.
Why go to all the trouble of creating Web sites, books and robots if consumers won’t initially know that Mini is behind the whole thing? Dave Swartz, who along with Paul Keister served as art director on the viral campaign, explains, "It’s just general branding, and eventually most people will think it’s subtle branding. I think people love the depth of it—Mini is known now for their work, and lots of people glom onto it because the company does really cool, fun things."
Initially, relates Swartz, when Mini was first introduced, the smallness of the car was emphasized, yet "the car has this large character about it inside." Indeed, despite its size, the Mini has a strong exterior and a powerful engine, attributes subtly hinted at in the book excerpt and Web sites.
Robo-Car
The process for "Men of Metal" began in 2003 with preliminary designs of a robot. Swartz says he and the rest of the creative team, which also included agency partner/executive creative director Alex Bogusky, creative director Andrew Keller, and copywriter Mike Lear (who has since left the shop), didn’t want the robot to look like a Transformer from the ’80s cartoon series. The team worked with artisans at Zoic, as well as Ron Kubat, a robotics guru who was brought on board for his technical expertise. "We decided that since Mayhew worked at Mini and was a parts engineer, he had access to car parts," explains Swartz. "We said to the engineer and to Zoic, ‘Here’s a parts manual, make this thing work out of all the parts from the car.’ "
"In our conversations we talked about how real this robot needed to be, and how we wanted to build it with science and engineering so even the experts would ask the question, ‘Is it real?’ " recounts Loni Peristere, creative director/director at Zoic; Andrew Orloff of Zoic served as co-creative director on the project. Peristere relates that the Zoic team, Kubat and Charles Rattery, a concept designer, all worked together to develop the robot—some of the initial drawings and schematics made it onto the Web site, further lending a sense of authenticity to the project. While developing the CG robot, the team also worked with Orloff, creative director/3-D supervisor at Zoic, to make sure the concepts would work in a 3-D finish.
CP+B’s Samuel came on board the project as producer after the creative team had some of its initial conversations with Zoic. "I was very interested in the project," Samuel notes. "The prospect of creating all those robots was really interesting. Also, it was one of those projects we hadn’t done a lot of before, so I was into it."
Casting his father as Dr. Mayhew came about after it proved difficult to find an actor to play the scientist. Samuel finally realized that his father—an engineer—would be perfect for the part. After showing the team some videos, the elder Samuel was given the job and flown to Miami, where Peristere shot the live action portion; the robot was later composited by Zoic’s Chris Jones. Jose Perez, senior modeler at the visual effects shop, did the actual CG model of the robot in Lightwave. The animation for the videos was completed in Lightwave and Maya using high dynamic range photography taken in Miami by digital effects supervisor Aram Granger and animator Jake Bergman. After compositing, the video was downgraded in a compression process through After Effects by editor Dimitri Greer.
Launch
The Web sites, hosted on public Internet service providers, were seeded into car and Mini enthusiast sites. Swartz notes that once links to the r50rd site appeared on www. slashdot.org, a self-proclaimed "news for nerds" forum, traffic to the sites grew quickly.
Next step was the book excerpt. "The book seemed like a good way to tell the back story as far as the creator of the robot, and the genesis of it," says CP+B’s Cianfrone. "We wanted to base the book around someone who could take the reader through the whole process of discovery, and the logical person for that was a journalist."
The book mentions the Web sites and connects the dots of the whole project. "We wanted people to see that there were connections," Cianfrone shares. "We didn’t want anyone to think it was done by the same place or through the same agency, or the same voice, but we definitely wanted people to go from one place to another and say, ‘There’s a bigger story here.’ "
The agency is pleased with the response to the "Men of Metal" package. "The whole idea of [the project is] that the breadth of it is greater than any one TV spot, and you’re part of a huge puzzle which turns out to be an amazing thing that a lot of people talk about all across the world," Samuel says.
He adds that a campaign such as this is appealing to audiences. "For a consumer that’s out there, it adds a whole different interest level than normal media that you get on TV does," he remarks, "and it’s much more interactive in terms of building a story. It’s something you become a part of as it grows. To be a producer on the end of … content that spreads itself a lot further than [traditional advertising] is great."
As for concerns that consumers might feel duped by the project, Swartz reports few complaints. "There’s very little of that, which surprised me," he muses. "People have either really believed it or realized it was a campaign."
