Mattel Hot Wheels & Boom Co. experience: Capturing imaginations and driving toy sales.
For the third year in a row we created Mattel’s ‘Zoom ‘N’ Boom’ brand experience campaign to showcase their Hot Wheels toy cars brand, and the exciting range of BOOMco blasting toys for boys. Our aim was to amplify both Mattel’s brands through an enticing experience that would engage young boys, by getting their hands on the toys and have a blast playing around with them. For the relatively new BOOMco brand, we focused on adrenaline-fuelled 7–11 year old boys with the brand message ‘Have a Blast’. We wanted boys to get a feel for the blasters and create a community of brand advocates that would tell all of their friends about BOOMco. For the Hot Wheels brand we aimed to reach and excite 6–9 year old thrill seekers and get them to ‘Go for It’, and help Mattel get across their overall ‘Endless Thrilling Vehicle Experience’ brand message, by educating them about the endless possibilities of the connectible track system. For both brands we had to get everyone excited enough to generate word of mouth, drive customers to the brand websites and encourage purchase.
2 brands, 1 brand experience.
We had to give both brands equal weighting and allow both distinct brand messages to come through clearly, through a single unified experience that put both brands front of mind and gave kids a dizzying array of things to get stuck in to. The stand itself looked amazing with a wow-factor and vibrancy that enticed passers-by on to the stand. Kids could race cars on the awesome Hot Wheels track builder systems, where they could attempt daring stunts and challenge friends. And they could ‘have a blast’ with the coolest new air-powered BOOMco blasters. Other fun-filled activities included a green screen where kids could try on cool props and have their photo taken with family and friends against various fun backdrops. To create awareness of the roadshow experience we leveraged shopping centre websites, Facebook and Twitter, and we also ran a VIP competition in local press. By creating the very first campaign where Mattel combined two separate brands into one brand experience, we were able to leverage the popularity of the Hotwheels brand, to engage customers with BOOMco - a relatively new product launch. This led to a huge increase in purchase consideration of BOOMco blasters.
Boom!
The combined brand experience was a roaring success, with word-of-mouth helping drive purchase at local retailers. 12% of visitors claimed to have purchased a BOOMco product post-event, of which over 60% were first time BOOMco purchasers. 92% of respondents engaged with the Hot Wheels product for over 7 minutes and 25% of respondents claimed to have visited the Hot Wheels website after the event, with 61% saying they were likely to purchase Hot Wheels in the future. In total there were 24,500 trials with an average 980 trials per day. 70%+ of the trialists were male and under 12 - hitting our target market. There was an average £18.40 spent per person at the event and 56% of visitors claimed to have purchased a product since the event. Resulting in a whopping £407,680 in sales (after 12 weeks) attributed to the event.