The Minions Marketing Team: Could It Have Done More?

by Hassan S. Ali

I’ve been just as excited as all of you for the release of Minions, the much-anticipated prequel to the Despicable Me franchise starring those endearingly obedient, gibberish-speaking yellow minions we all love.

And yet, I was also disappointed. Disappointed not because of the film (which is fantastic by the way, go see it). Rather, as someone who works in advertising and is a fan of the movie, I couldn’t help but wonder:

Could the Minions’ marketing team have done more to promote the film?

The answer: Yes. Because for all the marketing surrounding the movie, I can still identify NUMEROUS opportunities for branding and promotion that have gone overlooked, probably to the detriment of box office revenues.

Now, I’ll admit the franchise’s marketing team gave it the old college try to promote this and prior Despicable Me movies, including partnerships with Chiquita Banana, Twinkies, Amazon, McDonalds, the L.A. Times, Tic Tacs, an entire British town, headphones, EA Games, Capri-Sun, Green Giant, Wal-Mart, Pantone, the Cinerama Dome, public transit, General Mills, the Super Bowl, the NBA’s Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, Univision, Hallmark cards, the New York Stock Exchange, and Mott’s Applesauce.

And, true, according to Deadline.com’s Anita Busch, the studio has licensed the Minions characters to a sparse handful of products, including:

band-aids, backpacks, thumb drives, wrapping paper, pencil sets, key chains, iPhone cases, lunch boxes, sleeping bags, action figures, bedspreads, floor mats, umbrellas, straws, travel neck cushion pillows, flip flops, cake toppers (edible and not), thermoses, car decals, napkin holders, piggy banks, body pillows, cookie cutters, bath towels, area rugs, men’s ties, shower curtain hooks, luggage tags, toothbrushes, wallpaper, drapes, popsicle sticks, banana scented bubble bath, sleepwear, eyewear, underwear, overwear. –source: Deadline.com

So yes, I’ll give them that.

But… any marketer worth their weight in buzzwords can spot all the opportunities they glaringly missed here.

As such, I’ve identified some tactics the Minions marketing team should have capitalized on in order to maximize the film’s success, such as:

• Sponsoring the Pluto fly-by and renaming Pluto’s outermost moon as “Minion” instead of Hydra.
• Gaining Congressional approval to create a National Minions Day.
• Partnering with Lenscrafters (or for the Millennial demographic, Warby Parker) to sell prescription-ready Minion-like goggles and monocles.
• A partnership with GoPro to create a yellow Minion edition camera that straps to one’s head like the Minion’s goggles.
• Partnering with Levi’s to sell the Minions’ trademark denim overalls.
• Cross-promotion with the Hair Club For Men to “make over” the sparsely haired Minions with a luscious, full head of hair.
• Doing a “takeover” of any number of antidepressant medications by making the pills look like little Minions.
• Working the yellow Minions into an episode of The Simpsons.
• Sponsoring WWE Monday Night Raw and having Stu the Minion square off against John Cena.
• Partnering with the NBA to have the Minions race each other on a Jumbotron during this year’s NBA Finals. For fans whose Minion won the race, they’d get free tickets to the Minion film.
• Partnering with Major League Baseball to replace every team mascot with a life-sized Minion.
• Working with agricultural geneticists to create a new kind of movie popcorn that looks like the Minion characters.
• Selling Minion-branded caskets.
• Partnering with the Girl Scouts to sell “Minion Mint” cookies.
• Creating a Minions airline.
• Partnering with every U.S. state to create a scratch-off lottery game that promises to make you a “Minionaire.”
• Giving each Minion character a complete social media presence (think Twitter, Vine, Periscope, Pinterest, Tumblr, Tinder, and Google Plus)
• Paying rap/hip-hop stars to work the word “Minions” into their songs.
• Working with scientists to add a new element to the Periodic Table of Elements, called “Minionium.”
• Creating Minion-shaped crop circles to get free press coverage (what we in the industry call a “stunt”)
• Partnering with the USPS to create a Minions postal stamp.
• Partnering with the Mini car company to create a new Minions model.
• Developing a Minions-themed fragrance, cologne, or balm of some kind.
• Paying the International Olympic Committee to add a sixth Minion-themed ring to the Olympic logo.
• And finally, getting George Takei to retweet them.

Granted, hindsight is always 20/20, and we can’t be 100% sure of the studio politics that may have prevented a larger marketing effort. But one can only hope that any future Minions films, if they are to succeed, get the marketing push they deserve. The above list is just a starting point.

Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for my next post, in which I’ll discuss how Amazon should have done more to promote Prime Day.

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Hat-tips for this article: Brad Esposito, CartoonBrew.com