MINI Marketing

Here you'll find information about MINI's marketing approach, including the many
ways in which MINI communicates with customers and potential customers,
including:

National Advertising
Direct Marketing
MINI Internet

To get started, here are some important marketing terms.

BRAND
A brand is a name, term, sign or symbol that lets customers identify a product or
service in a way that sets it apart from its competitors. But a brand can be more than
just a company name and logo; by creating a consistent image in the minds of their
customers the strongest brands can be said to have a recognisable 'personality'.
MINI, for example, is energetic, cheeky, stylish, self-confident, reliable and exciting.

Here are some of the ways MINI communicates its brand:

• MINI uses a recognisable graphic style, with brightly coloured boxes around
text and the same typeface, or font, for all its communications
• All the marketing from MINI is written in the same style, or 'tone of voice',
using cheeky, intelligent humour, to make MINI feel gutsy and fun. It all has
the same personality
• At the heart of the brand is the car itself. Much of the MINI personality
comes from the uniqueness of the design and the exciting driving
experience

STRAPLINE
Most brands have a 'strapline' - a short phrase that helps strengthen peoples'
understanding and feelings about the brand. MINI's most famous strapline was 'It's a
MINI adventure'.

TARGET AUDIENCE
It is important to sell the right product to the right people; this is the 'target audience',
which is usually defined by age, sex and income. MINI also targets people who have
a certain character. Different types of marketing and different creative approaches
can be used to reach different audiences.

UNIQUE SELLING POINT (USP)

This is whatever makes a product or service unique - the one thing it has that its
competitors don't. One USP of MINI is that, because of its history, it is more a cultural
icon that just a car. Can you think of another MINI USP?

ABOVE THE LINE

This is a term originating in the 1950s referring to advertising in mass media, like TV,
radio, press and outdoor, which allow an advertiser to reach a wide audience. 'Below
the line' includes other marketing techniques, like direct mail, where communication
reaches people individually. The rise of the internet has 'blurred the line', because
online marketing can reach a mass audience and still be very dire ct.
National Advertising
An advertising campaign could be local, national or sometimes global, depending on
where it can be seen. MINI uses national advertising to announce the release of new
UK models and to keep people interested in the MINI brand. Broadly speaking,
national advertising is divided into these three sectors - according to the 'medium'
which carries it:

ONLINE MEDIA
ONLINE ADVERTISING
35 million people have access to the internet in the UK so it has become an
important communication medium for many brands. Over the years, MINI has
created a series of online adverts to catch people's attention and encourage them to
visit the MINI website.

FLASH BANNERS
Like adverts in a magazine, flash banners sit on particular pages of a website. 'Flash'
is the technology used to create the banners. Ads like this can be very creative as
animated images or video can be included. Often the viewer can interact with the
advert, for example having a tug of war with a MINI.

EYEBLASTERS
Eyeblasters (sometimes called 'page takeovers') are large-size adverts that appear
as a layer over the top of the web page itself, rather than in a separate window. This
means the adverts can cover up or play around with the other elements on the page:
for example a MINI could drive across the screen. They can also have sound (though
the user normally needs to activate this).

PRESS AND OUTDOOR

OUTDOOR (BILLBOARDS/POSTERS)
The latest development in this field of advertising is 'digital outdoor'. At its simplest,
this means images that are projected using giant TV equipment. These can be
changed at the flick of a switch so there's no need for expensive printing and time-
consuming wallpaper pasting. This type of advert can be thought of as a paperless
poster. Where it's allowed, for example in stations and on the London Underground,
these adverts can be animated.

Another development is 'interactive outdoor'. Sites at ground level, for example, in

bus shelters, can now offer people something extra, perhaps a ringtone or a voucher
or a video message, which they can download to their phone using Bluetooth. This
makes the advert more interesting to people and lets the advertiser provide more
information about its product.

PRINT ADVERTISING
TV, cinema and poster campaigns are used to deliver high impact brand
communication, which means that the message is very visual and makes the viewer
feel strongly about what he or she is seeing. However, it is sometimes important to
balance a marketing campaign with more detailed messages. Magazine and
newspaper advertising can do this effectively as the reader has time to absorb the
message (if you can grab their attention!).

TV AND CINEMA
TELEVISION
The first MINI campaigns in 2001 centred on the idea of 'IT'S A MINI ADVENTURE'.
Each showed a highly dramatic escapade compressed into a short space of time: a
MINI adventure. In more recent adverts the adventurous spirit of MINI remains, but
the creative idea has often been more about MINI's wonderful individuality.

CINEMA
While the same adverts are often shown in both TV and cinema, the big screen offers
its own possibilities. One cinema advert showed a MINI driven along a country lane
and disappearing into the distance. But the advert was treated as a feature film, with
a classification page and full credits. The film entered the Guinness World Records
as the shortest movie ever made, lasting just 12 seconds. This is an example of how
MINI plays with traditional advertising media to create something innovative and fun.

Direct marketing
Direct marketing, or 'DM', is when a brand communicates 'directly' with people by
sending out personalised letters or emails. Direct marketing is often used to
communicate with a company's existing customers, in which case it can refer to other
facts the company might know about them, for example, what kind of MINI they
bought and how old it is now. In keeping with its cheeky brand, MINI has a long
tradition of unique and attention-grabbing direct marketing.

MOTOR SHOW CAMPAIGN

The aim of this campaign was to invite selected MINI owners to the MINI event at the
2006 Motor Show and excite them about some exclusive offers. They were sent
direct mail and/or an email which asked them to log on to a microsite explaining
everything. The creative work followed a jokey TV campaign warning people to watch
out for 'fake MINIs'.

EMAIL ACQUISITION PIECE

In direct marketing it's important to have up-to-date information about the customers
you're contacting. This direct mail piece asked customers to help MINI by checking
whether their information was correct and provide a signature. The incentive to
respond was a free handwriting analysis and entry to a competition. The prize was a
personalised adventure weekend tailored according to the handwriting analysis.

MINIS UNDERCOVER
Three new MINIs were launched together in early 2007. People who had registered
an interest online were sent an email inviting them to see a sneak preview of the new
models. The email explained that the MINIs were 'under cover' but that you could
release them by pressing 'the right buttons'. The email contained a link which allowed
people to click through to a web page where computer-generated MINIs were tearing
around in a warehouse under a giant piece of silk. When you pressed a button the
MINIs burst out dramatically into full view.

MINI Internet
Most brands have a website of some kind that provides an online place for customers
and potential customers to find information about their products and services.
Websites are a very efficient way of making people interested and excited about a
brand. Many websites allow people to buy or order products online. Websites also
offer a quick and cost-effective way to provide customer service information.

WWW.MINI.CO.UK
There are MINI websites in every country that sells MINIs; www.MINI.co.uk is the
main MINI website in the UK (you're on it right now). Here visitors can find
information on all the different MINI models, plus details about things like financing
and insurance. There's also interesting 'sticky' content to encourage people to stay
on the site.

• Design your own MINI(opens in new window)

• The history of MINI(opens in new window)
• Games and downloads(opens in new window)

DEALER SITES
MINIs are sold through local dealerships, and many of these have their own website
where test drives can be booked, services arranged and used MINIs can be bought.
To make sure they keep everything 'on-brand', when dealers create their own sites
they must follow guidelines from MINI.

Here's an example of a MINI dealer website.

http://www.miniparklane.com
(opens in new window)

MULTIMEDIA
With more and more people enjoying broadband connection to the internet, websites
are increasingly able to use multimedia techniques, including the use of video.
In the run up to the launch of the new MINI Clubman, when the car itself couldn't be
shown, visitors to the MINI homepage were treated to this mysterious film. It set up
the Clubman as 'The other MINI' and invited people to register their interest. Those
who registered were later emailed full details of the MINI Clubman with the chance to
book an early test drive.

View the Clubman video

(opens in new window)

http://www.mini.co.uk/html/about_us/mini_education/marketing.html

© Copyright 2008 BMW AG, Munich, Germany