Automotive Marketing: Nissan Pino Pinoshop - Purikura-like car customization for women

Written by: Michael Keferl on January 29, 2007 at 12:39 am | In Fashion & Lifestyle Trends, Marketing & Ad Trends |

Last week, Nissan released the cute and highly customizable Pino, a 660 cc mini car that can be totally decked out with patterned seat covers, stuffed animals, matching handbags, tissue covers, cd cases, and more. All of these accessories are part of a collaboration with Sony Plaza which (among other things) sells popular and trendy lifestyle products for women.

The Pino itself comes in nine exterior colors, but the real push is with the interior customization, marketed through the easy-to-use, flash-based “Pinoshop” website. Because the Pino is marketed towards 18-30 year old women (the purikura generation), the Pinoshop allows users to customize their Pino online with an interface very similar to the purikura photo booths they grew up with.

It operates like Japanese purikura in that you can add lots of stickers, glitter, backgrounds, and drag and drop all of the car accessories to the car. When you’re done, take a picture! The shopping cart makes it a breeze to buy the exact package you just picked out.

In our eyes, this is a perfect example of knowing a demographic well and marketing to it. Japanese women don’t just know purikura, they lived it in high school, and now they want to buy cute cars. Nice work Nissan.

The basic Pino goes for ¥861,000 ($7,000), but the Barbapapa cushion will set you back ¥3,465 ($28).

Pictures via Pinoshop

Tags: Automotive, Customization, Marketing, Nissan
Category: Fashion & Lifestyle Trends, Marketing & Ad Trends
Other categories: Technology & Gadget Trends