MINI Cooper Straps a Car to a Rocket to Launch New Vehicle

MINI Cooper created an out of this world stunt on Oct. 27 with a 30-foot rocket display featuring the tagline “Hold On” in New York’s Meatpacking District to promote its new Coupe. The display featured one of its cars strapped to a rocket to promote its fifth and fastest member of the MINI family. Playing up the rocket theme, the brand had a street team dressed like astronauts hand out freeze-dried “space” ice cream. The astronauts and two MINIs also marched in the Village’s annual Halloween Parade.

“How many times have we said we’re going to launch a car? So we decided to ‘literally’ launch the car by strapping it to a rocket,” Tom Salkowsky, MINI marketing manager, told Buzz. “It was a huge success for MINI. It put a smile on people’s faces and we saw our website traffic increase as well as our Facebook friends and a lot of positive tweets and retweets.”

There were even some surprises, Salkowksy says, “I was reading a blog on MAC OSX Daily and someone wrote about seeing one of our astronauts testing out an Apple product on his own time in the neighborhood’s Apple store. The stunt found it’s way into the universe in unsuspecting ways which is always exciting.”

Leading up to the stunt, MINI promoted on Facebook with a “rocket countdown” to tease consumers. It slowly revealed rocket parts as it got closer to reveal time. Street teams handed out “prepare to launch” t-shirts and buttons, then overnight the team built the rocket display, which folks woke up to the next morning. It remained on-site for six days. MINI also engaged fans on Foursquare by giving the first 15 people to check in at the rocket on Halloween an Apple gift card. Agency: CityEventions, New York City.