Mattel Hot Wheels ‘Epic race': An epic experience, reconnecting with fans and families.
Mattel's Hot Wheels is the most popular die-cast toy car in the world, having sold more than four billion cars since 1968. For the fourth consecutive year, Mattel asked us to create a brand experience to drive awareness and excitement around how ‘connectible’ the Hot Wheels track is, while promoting the idea of boys and girls as track ‘Connectors’. The experience had to create a lot of buzz while helping educate kids on the full potential of connecting the Hot Wheels track, give them a fun hands-on experience of becoming a Connector and compete in a race on one of the four ‘action’, ‘design’, ‘imagination’ or ‘speed’ tracks, as part of the Epic Race. The experience also had to get dads on board with the Hot Wheels brand.
An epic track for an epic race.
The Epic Race campaign had two phases - the Scouts Beaver and Cub Fun Day followed by the Epic Race Roadshow a few months later. For the Epic Race Fun Day we invited Beavers and Scouts to become a Connector and race on one of the four tracks inside the Hot Wheels ‘barn’. The final phase of the Epic Race took place during October half term at Westfield shopping centre in London, where we transformed ‘The Atrium’ into the ultimate Hot Wheels experience. Children were given a deadline to build an awesome Hot Wheels track with cool loops, before they got to race their car around their personalised Hot Wheels track. If they managed to successfully loop their cars around the track, they were officially designated a Hot Wheels Connector. We made sure the younger children had fun too, inside the ‘Testing Zone’ where they could race their cars without having to build a track. The Hot Wheels Epic Race experience was a big hit with kids and their families. We gained coverage for the events through PR editorials in national and regional press, online blogs and competitions, emails to the Beavers and Scouts, social media and we were also sponsored by Toxic Magazine - which we gave away in goody bags to everyone who got involved with the experience.
The epic race - a winning formula
Over the course of the experience 15,845 children directly interacted with the Hot Wheels Epic Race experience, of which 68% were boys & 69% were aged 3 – 9, which hit our demographic targets for the event.