💎Deep Dive: Unboxing the Viral Marketing of Mini Brands

Howdy marketer!

Small things are cute, right?

I actually have a small fascination with dioramas. Small, recreated scenes painstakingly built in 1:16 scale – gush.

Our tendency to find small things cute actually has biological traces.

Take babies – they’re tiny humans. It’s pertinent that we find them cute and adorable, so we take care of them (and from what I’ve heard, they’re loads of work).

If you’re wondering why I’m talking about this – 

It’s because I’ve been seeing ZURU Mini Brands all over the place.

And it got me thinking – why would people buy miniature branded items? 

Brand in the hot seat: 🤏 ZURU Mini Brands

Today's Treasure Trove

• What is Mini Brands?

• Who Would Buy Mini Brands?

• The Psychology Behind the Appeal

• Marketing Strategies for Virality

  • FOMO

  • Distribution

  • Owning the unboxing culture

• What Mini Brands Could Do Next

• Wrap Up

What is Mini Brands?

Quick Stats:

Instagram: 154K followers

Facebook: 13K followers

TikTok: 2.3 million followers

ZURU is a Hong-Kong based toy company that has disrupted the toy market globally. 

A part of ZURU Toys, Mini Brands, launched in 2019, is a line of detailed miniatures of real products, featuring brands across industries like food, books, and sneakers. You’ve probably seen the mini Campbell’s soup can or tiny Banana Boat sunscreen.

A key part of its marketing strategy is licensing with entities like Disney and Nickelodeon.

This helps ZURU in reaching its audience through recognizable and nostalgic characters, often having a story around them.

Who Would Buy Mini Brands?

Mini Brands engages multiple age groups. 

Children, of course, are a natural target audience in the toys category.

But teenagers, young adults, and millennials are major customers for two reasons:

• There is a nostalgia around the products and nostalgia is incredibly powerful

• The Tik-Tok unboxing sensation made many hop on the bandwagon.

The availability of Mini Brands at big box retail stores and at a low enough price point to be an “impulse” purchase made them virtually irresistible.

So, for adults, it becomes more of a hobby to collect miniatures and also recreate tiny-scale scenes. (hello, my diorama people!)

The Psychology Behind the Appeal

When we see baby animals or infants, we immediately find them cute. 

Why?

Because they’re naturally harmless, delicate, and adorable.

This has a psychological term - neoteny. 

It’s when we’re wired to find small, simplified versions of something more appealing. 

That’s partly the reason behind Mini Brands’ appeal.

For collectors, the appeal increases as it is a low cost and high dopamine rush option. 

In fact, Mini Brands also offers a Collector’s Case to keep up with this appeal:

This works because the collectors don’t have to burn their pockets but still get their hands on something they can curate. This is actually quite savvy, since many other collectibles can get expensive quickly.

Mini Brands also brings back the element of play in often monotonous adult lives. 

A common thread that ties it all together is really: that we all desire a sense of control. 

Not in a bad way, but in today’s times, when the world is seemingly in increasing chaos, a sense of control, though vicarious, can help you relieve some of the stress.

Marketing Strategies for Virality

FOMO

One of the most popular marketing levers in the book: FOMO works almost like magic.

With platinum and limited editions, they tap into the scarcity trigger. This creates urgency, making Mini Brands vanish from stores.

Yes, there’s the pull to make the popular items evergreen, to continue milking them, but creating a continuous hype cycle with new limited-time products is much better for long-term brand life.

Distribution

This is key: Mini Brands is available in places like Target, Walmart, and Amazon.

The price point and in-store placements encourage impulse-buys. 

Without these two critical components, I don’t think Mini Brands would have near the success they’ve seen so far. 

Owning the unboxing culture

TikTok has been a goldmine for Mini Brands. 

Their virality thrives on ASMR unboxings and surprise reveals.

This encourages user-generated content in high volume. And there’s nothing like free word-of-mouth marketing! 

Of course, they may have an influencer marketing team that sends Mini Brands out to influencers to ahem encourage TikTok-ers to film and post (especially if there’s a special edition coming out), but I haven’t heard definitely that they’re using this tactic.

What Mini Brands Could Do Next

Currently, the customers are fanatically engaged online.

Mini Brands could create an offline community experience. Imagine pop-ups in malls where consumers can interact and exchange their minis – and yes, the event could happen within a small globe with limited entrants (mimicking their product’s packaging).

Hosting a contest for curators can also get already loyal fans to be even more obsessed. For instance, a photo contest for customers to create elaborate dioramas featuring Mini Brands, where a winner is chosen and receives an incredible prize from one of their license partners.

Wrap Up

Beyond toys, Mini Brands is a brilliantly executed viral brand. Playing on psychological triggers, it has been able to appeal to people across generations. 

With interactive spaces, they will be able to keep consumers engaged beyond just a TikTok trend. 

For brands, this is also an opportunity to find a space in their customers’ homes with limited edition Mini Brands. 

One thing we can all learn from this is that packaging can be a major part of the experience. It can bring mystery by hiding the product. It can showcase the product by displaying it beautifully upon reveal. And packaging can be viral by simply being weird (remember Chaos Packaging?)

✌️,

Tom from Marketer Gems (LinkedIn)