#MiniMania: The Launch of Mini Brands

This is a story of how a mini toy brand became a HUGE viral success. Built around the growing miniaturization trend, we partnered with big FMCG companies to shrink their household name products into 5 Surprise Mini Brands.

We knew organic influencer content would be vital to create a collector’s frenzy, but this space was becoming crowded. We therefore set our sights on emerging platform TikTok, seeding 100s of capsules to ambitious content creators, hungry for opportunity. The aim was to create a group of brand ambassadors we could call upon and collaborate with, whose audience reflected ours perfectly. We gave influencers complete freedom to express the brand through #TinyThings and #MiniBrands... and it worked!

Influencer and User-generated content poured onto the platform making Mini Brands and #TinyThings TikTok’s #1 trending hashtag, reaching 600M views to date and sales reaching 120 pieces per store per week against an industry average of 5! The peak sales week saw 250,000 capsules bought (that's one every 2.5 seconds)! Taking hold of this momentum, we re-engaged our influencer network suggesting content themes such as ‘peal and reveal’, collection showings, and ‘find and buy’ videos. We then partnered with lead influencer @WeWearCute to produce a Christmas themed advertisement that achieved double the benchmark engagement rate on TikTok.

The success was driven by a product that allowed content generation at all stages of the buyers journey, from discovery, to purchase, to experience and ultimately, collection. Allowing this to flourish through our vast range of influencers has generated countless trends, themes and viral videos that to this day, are still generating millions of views per month. By engaging with influencers and letting organic content lead the charge, we developed a personality and culture around the brand that has endured and is still gaining momentum. Need proof? In 14 months, this toy has featured as the the #1 most searched toy on Google in December, and the 11th best selling toy in the US, entirely through influencer and digital lead marketing. A needed and welcome change for the Toy Industry.