The average 8 year-old boy in the US owns 45 Hot Wheels cars. To grow the business, Hot Wheels had to evolve from toys to a more entertainment-focused brand. The campaign was created around the idea of 'Hot Wheels For Real'. We created entertainment content, with a story (centred on the mysterious Hot Wheels Testing Facility - a place that tests cars and tracks on a life-sized scale) and characters (a real team of the world's best drivers) to attract 2 new audiences: 1. An audience that had grown out of the brand and was now heavily consuming entertainment content.

2. Licensees that could introduce new products to Hot Wheels.

This entertainment strategy was introduced to the world via a global campaign: a combination of online content, a world-record jump event and long-form TV content ー 'Hot Wheels for Real'.

An extensive online media campaign showed teaser content of a secret driver training for a world record jump, based on a real-life version of a Hot Wheels toy.Live at the Indianapolis 500, Hot Wheels and the 'Yellow Driver' broke the world record for a vehicle jump in front of 300,000 people. The jump was then edited in real-time and dropped into a 30 minute TV show on one of USA's major TV networks and at the end of the show, as the driver was to be revealed, the audience was pushed to Facebook, where his identity was revealed.

The integrated campaign, which ran for just under ３months, garnered over 40 million viewings and 1.7bn media impressions and attracted over 200,000 new Facebook fans (most of which, importantly, are from a demographic that had grown out of Hot Wheels).

The campaign earned a world record, created a real team of stunt drivers, attracted new licensed brand partnerships, inspired a new range of Hot Wheels products and was instrumental in attracting one of the world's leading film studios to sign up for a blockbuster Hollywood movie.