Goodbye Pork Pie is to Mini in New Zealand as The Italian Job is to Mini in Europe. So, to drum up some interest in the new Mini Hatch in this part of the world, Mini, DDB and director Matt Murphy—the son of the original film’s director Geoff Murphy—set out on a mission to remake a classic scene from the movie. And the final clip premiered this week.
Mini marketing manager Simonne Mearns says the new scene was shown to around 120 media and friends of Mini at an exclusive premiere MCed by Sam Wallace earlier this week and she says it was great to see everyone’s positive reactions to the clip. It also showed a seven minute video that took everyone through the whole campaign, which asked Kiwis to show their true Blondini colours, participate in a few challenges and compete to win a place in the passenger seat during the reshoot.
The new scene is currently available on the website but it will be officially pushed out through the dealer network, social media and other media next week, so Mearns expects some more interest around the campaign then.
23-year-old Wellingtonian Vincent Blake Chilton won the starring role, beating out close to 2,000 entries after his audition tape captured the eye of Murphy. Fittingly, Blake Chilton, a freelance filmmaker, was born and bred in Invercargill and says he was a huge fan of the original movie and had just recently watched it again.
Mearns says the campaign, one of the first major projects for BMW/Mini’s new agencies DDB and Dynamo, came together beautifully and, despite creating some pretty high barriers to entry with all the requirements and challenges, she was very happy with the number of entries and the level of chatter about the campaign on social channels, with an “astronomical” rise in the number of comments, likes and shares through Facebook.
She says the new Mini Hatch was quite a difficult proposition to communicate, because, at first glance, it looks similar to the previous iteration. But up close it is actually filled with a bunch of new features, so it “needed a reason to talk about the car”.
“That’s what the movie has given us … It doesn’t feel like an ad. We’re not making a commercial. We’ve set out to create some excitement around what Mini stands for.”
Another challenge was the fact that the campaign was based around something that happened in the ’80s, so it had to try and bring back what the movie stands for and show that to a new audience that may not have seen it.
“And we have certainly managed to do that. The cheeky attitude in the movie still rings true for Mini.”
One of the “big picture goals” is for the Goodbye Pork Pie 2014 campaign to put the movie back on the radar and help facilitate a full remake, something that has been on the table since 2012. And she says Mini would be right behind that idea.
