Although our device packs all the powers of the Google Assistant inside, it’s also delightful and cute. Based on the strategy, we knew making the device approachable and familiar was critical to breaking through the ‘why should I care?’ barrier.

This led us to the idea: Size of a donut. Power of a superhero.

Given that 10 billion donuts are eaten by Americans every year, and they are second most shared food on Instagram, it seemed like the perfect visual metaphor to build on to ensure that every person could relate to what we were serving up. That’s why we built a physical, touring donut shop as the perfect environment to introduce the world to the Google Home Mini.

We designed a fresh-out-the-oven, real-life donut shop around Mini, and invited the public to visit. The experience inside was memorable, educational and oh-so-shareable. Instead of a donut menu, people were offered menus of queries. Once Mini answered their query, they received a box – inside of which were fresh local donuts or a Google Home Mini. Everybody who entered left a winner. We toured our magical shop across the U.S. and Canada, where it popped up in eleven cities that don’t always get love from big brands. We created fanfare around the tour with a multi-channel campaign of social, influencer and media promotions. There was also a ‘donut cart’ we used to engage key opinion formers at events like Forbes’ Most Powerful Women, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and the Oscar’s VIP pre-party. Best of all, the tour continued from North America onto Japan and is currently traveling the U.K.

People loved what we served up. In fact, the experience received over 82,877 physical visits, each of which included a product interaction.

We got the visitors, media and socialsphere talking. We had 843,079 visits to the campaign microsite, over 82 million estimated earned social impressions and the campaign garnered over 479 million estimated earned media impressions.

More than one Google Home device was sold every second from when Mini started shipping October 19th into the new year.