How Mattel & Hot Wheels ‘activated boys of all ages’

I have to admit that my 6 yr old son and I can occasionally be found rigging up his Hot Wheels track of a weekend, and so when I saw this case study come in to my inbox via BusinessInsider’s ‘Marketing Mondays’ feature, I had to take a look. It’s such a great example of social media marketing and creating a real buzz around your brand on-line that I felt it was one to share here for future use looking at branding, and the increasing use of social media.

Mattel and Hot Wheels put on a record-breaking stunt called ‘Fearless at the 500’ staged at this year’s Indy500. They had a build up over 18 months in which mystery drivers from the world of professional motor racing & stunt driving talked of the preparations at the newly formed ‘Team Hot Wheels’.

This link (you may need to register to view it) gives a great summary of how Mattel approached this project and the benefits they got from it - 6 million plus YouTube views, 12,000 new Facebook Fans and coverage of the event on ABC in the US. There is also a link to a talk from the brand managers if you are really keen to find out more. One of them is quoted as saying “In a span of two minutes, those fans created more content than my entire organization could create in two months”.

Mattel’s aim was to ‘activate boys of all ages’ which is a imaginative brand objective. They have certainly activated me!

I’ve a hunch (and it’s no more than that) that the role of social media in business could be a future AQA BUSS4 research theme, so I’ve been keeping an eye out for these sorts of stories.

Clearly the best bit is watching the stunt take place, so of course the YouTube video clip is here too.