Bmw Questions

CASE 6: BMW’s ‘Company of Ideas’ Campaign

1. What has been the brand (BMW) image/personality before the campaign? How is the company trying to change it? It would be good if you could give examples of other niche brands that had either succeeded or failed in expanding its market beyond its niche.

BMW uses segmentation to identify specific buying characteristics.

• Geographically: Heavy industrialized areas such as, Europe and North America.

• Demographically: People able to buy a BMW are men and women from 30 to 60 years old.

• Behaviorally: Yuppies, modern successful image, comfortable of themselves. The benefits required by these people are exclusivity, performance, reliability & quality.

• Socioeconomically: A, B and C+ status.

• Beneficial characteristics of society: performance, exclusivity and quality.

They target specific automobile marketers using a differentiated strategy by producing different types of cars for different markets inside the same segment. For example they produce the truck X5 for people that have the characteristics of the segmentation but have some different specific needs like outdoor activities (4x4).

BMW’s image has been positioned during the years as a high performance, exclusive and quality car producer. Due to the number of companies that manufacture cars with similar attribute such as price and quality, the market that BMW addresses is a high competence market.

The way the different companies differ is how they are in their consumer minds, the image that they deliver to them.

BMW has worked for years to position itself in consumer minds as “the ultimate driving machine” in a positive way, as bringing the “joy” of driving.

The brand personality image before the campaign was “Joy in driving”. The costumer thought about BMW as an ultimate driving experience, the costumer associates the word “drive” with BMW with “The Ultimate driving machine”. This campaign was communicated for more than...