What brought on the fame of the Minions?

What about the Minions that made them so adored?

Minions, who have been dominating the media since the release of the first Despicable Me movie in 2010 are still being hash tagged. The sudden popularity of these pill-shaped screw balls has not been lost on Pierre Coffin, who voices the main minions and has served as a co-director of the ‘Despicable Me’ movie franchise.

It has become increasingly hard to escape the Minions realm of influence and digital marketing. So what is it that makes these yellow coloured ovals so popular?

Why don’t you try to escape, they’d love to see you try

Presumably, you might try to avoid them by not hanging around with children, but that won’t matter because they make Minion grab for adults too, and anyone who eats  bananas. People just love the Minions.

The extreme popularity of the Minions have cause the release of the Despicable Me movie number 2. But soon after, in 2012 Universal Studios announced that the Minions from Despicable Me would have their own spin off movie which was planned to be released in June of 2014.

This date was soon pushed forward to June 2015 due to Universal’s satisfaction with the July release of Despicable Me 2.

Minions vs Toy story: What’s the story

Minions and their Millions

The Film Minions had its first world premiere on June 11th 2015 in Leicester Square, London. it was soon released in Indonesia, Singapore, USA and many more countries.

As of July 12th 2015 Minions has grossed $115.7 million in North America and $280.5 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $395.7 million in the first weekend of its release, against a budget of $74 million.

In 1991, the first ever Disney movie was produced: Toy story. It is said to have a budget of $30 million, which is the lowest budget for any Disney movie ever produced. Although the studios had such a low budget they managed to earn $361 million worldwide.

This might seem to be in competition with Minions but if you read that paragraph again, you’ll notice that the Minions’ movie produced $395.7 million in the FIRST WEEKEND!

Minions and Toy Story; The Creation of Two Phenomenon

• In July 1991, Disney and Pixar signed an agreement to work on a film, based on the Tin Toy characters, called Toy Story.
• The deal gave Pixar a three-film deal with Toy Story being the first, as well as 10% of the films’ profits.
• Pixar presented an early draft of the film to Disney in November 1993 and the result was disastrous.
• Walt Disney Animation president Peter Schneider immediately shut down production pending a new script approved by Disney
• Pixar survived the shut down by falling back into existing television commercial business while the script was rewritten.
• The new script made Woody a more likable character, instead of the ‘sarcastic jerk’ he had been.
• Katzenberg restarted production in February 1994. The voice actors returned in March to record their new lines

So what’s the mission??

Minions are small, yellow earplug-like creatures who have existed since the beginning of time, evolving from single celled organisms into being who have only one purpose: to serve history’s most villainous bosses.

They successfully find great masters, including a T.Rex, a caveman, an Egyptian pharaoh, Dracula and Napoleon, but after accidentally killing them all soon after, they decide to isolate themselves from the world and start a new life in Antarctica.

By 1968, the lack of a master drives them into depression, so fearless lead Minion Kevin comes up with a plan to find a new master for his minion kind.

He sets off to New York with 2 other minions on a search for the Best Villain for them to serve.

Social Media

The use of Social Media has been the focal point for the Minions digital marketing campaign. With over :

• 31 million Facebook likes
• over 303.1 thousand Twitter followers
• In addition to 413 thousand Instagram followers, the Minion Movie truly has a global following.

The promotion of the new movie through trailers. real life media scenarios such as magazine pieces and movie premiere interview for the voice actors, are just a few of the angles of marketing employed to maintain and create audience interest.

	Facebook Likes	Twitter Followers	YouTube Views
Toy Story	32 million	81.6 thousand	160,000
Minions	31 million	303.1 thousand	200,000

On the other hand Toy story’s social media accounts have been less active ever since the production ended.

• Over 32 million Facebook likes for all 3 of their movies

• 81.6 thousand Twitter followers

The Toy story franchise doesn’t seem at all to be close in comparison to the single movie of the Minions.

Minions- reaching the super fans

The movie fans are more likely to dress up , post pictures ask questions and many more, which is fantastic marketing that doesn’t require management.

The many voice actors of the minions such as Pierre Coffin, Sandra Bullock, Steve Carell and many more have been appearing more and more on social media, constantly using their platforms to promote the Movie.

The co-producer of this movie, Pierre Coffin has commented that; ‘It’s like, too much marketing. I’m almost concerned people will be disappointed in the movie after seeing all these things around…it’s unconsciously creating these high expectations.’

But it seems that the release of this movie was an ultimate success, and as movie watchers we were responsible for the phenomenal success of The Minions; we talked about it, we shared our thoughts on it, we watched fan made animations on YouTube.

Universal Studios may have provided the initial pre-launch teaser information but with the permission to share as we please without fear of corporate censorship, the public are now largely credited with being the digital marketing heroes behind the success of the movie.

Fortunately the Minions’ core values were reflected perfectly on its audience, and in their changing media habits.

The strategy would develop a suite of Minion-minded assets that lived on social and increasingly mobile environments where  the audience would share and be able to play with and engage with the Minions.

Wherever the Minions were, consumers of all ages would be able to engage with them.

And the winner is…?

With the production on Minion rush and the Draw something app getting over 150 million downloads and 2 million drawn entries in the first week of their release, they became one of the biggest IOS and Android apps of 2013.

Despicable Me 2 became one of the most popular film destination in Facebook history with a 90%+ increase in fans. There are now an incredible 35 million Minion fans on Facebook-mirroring the almost insane loyalty of the Minions themselves. Comparatively, Monsters Inc. has less than 20 million fans.

Minions are malleable and numerous enough to run the complete spectrum of human emotion. Furthermore Coffin pointed out that they are extremely easy to draw- goggled eyes, rounded body and some overalls. So they can do anything you need them to do.

Anything.