You can’t choose your family, they say. Actually, with MINI you can. As of today citizens of Berlin, visitors to the German capital and Facebook users worldwide can make their choice when MINI presents the MINI family on Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm boulevard as part of the guerilla campaign “It’s personal”. Participants are invited to enter the on-site MINI Photo Box, clamp on a pair of vibrantly coloured headphones and select their favourite model from the MINI family with colour-matched exterior mirrors.

There are four colours and four models to choose from: the MINI Hatch, MINI Convertible, MINI Clubman and MINI Countryman. Next, participants appear in real time on a 104-square-metre video screen together with their photo and personalised MINI model. The MINI campaign was set up overnight from 15 to 16 May and continues until 29 May 2011 at the intersection of Kurfürstendamm and Joachimstaler Straße. It is being run in parallel as an international campaign at http://www.facebook.com/MINI.

“With our ‘It’s personal’ campaign, MINI fans interact individually and authentically in an urban environment,” says Julia Hartmann, MINI Brand Management. “Through the personal configuration of the model, along with their choice of colours, we encourage them to express their personality – in front of friends and a global audience.” This unconventional marketing campaign is set to reach more than two million people on location and over 1.8 million MINI Facebook fans. Dean and Dan Caten, creator of the fashion label DSQUARED2, are also taking part in the campaign. They will present this year’s Life Ball MINI in Vienna on Saturday.

Facebook users can apply to participate online at http://www.facebook.com/MINI or direct at: http://apps.facebook.com/miniphotobox by taking a photo with their webcam, selecting their model from the MINI family and uploading it. They too appear on the video screen in Berlin. The images, in turn, are streamed live on the internet. Whether through Facebook or Photo Box, all pictures will be entered into a competition. For this purpose, visitors to the event in Berlin will be given an ID number – along with their printed photo – with which to register on Facebook. The winner will be announced in June 2011 and can enjoy his or her specially selected, favourite MINI model “for real” – complete with colourful exterior mirrors.

[Source: MINI ]