Website Reviews 31 Jul

Mini USA Motoring Citations
www.miniusa.com

Despite strong attempts to engage digitally, motoring sites have a sameness about them (a few notable exceptions - current VW activity in the UK seems particularly good). Sites share common attributes: high quality photograpy (from offline activity), 'build your vehicle' and get it priced, specifications and dealer finders, etc. A large number of sites also try to inject a sense of fun into their digital engagement strategies. Trying to be fun is hard, however, particularly if this is not an attribute generally associated with the brand. If 'fun' is a digital-only stance, it likely misses the target.

Mini succeeds digitally with 'fun' because fun is wrapped round the entire brand. For Mini, it's not an add-on to be cool online, it's part of the everyday presentation of the product portfolio.

The Mini USA site is very attractively designed and engaging. There are plenty of fun expressions of the brand and products, one of which particularly caught my eye - the Motoring Citation. This is a download-and-print-out pdf to place on other motorists vehicles. Designed to look like an official citation (of some motoring wrong doing) the citation in this example is actually a positive one. Commending the driver on good parking, smart wheels, real mud on a 4x4, etc. It's a bit of fun and nicely engages visitors and not a vehicle specification in sight. Even if one doesn't use the citation, it does, at least to my mind, secure in the visitor's mind the fun positioning of the brand.

It's hard to generate separation for products online, but this type of activity is a nice way to try.