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Evaluate and analysis various examples, studies, reports and theories eating to the key repositioning of the brand in the global market after the takeover. Towards concluding the essay, I would be able to examine and point out the future moves of Marketing Strategies of MINI. Try to find out the possible future tactics they could carry out to spread its reach in the global market. This in turn will act a stepping stone for my critical evaluation as a marketing proficient analyst.
Contemplating on the examples, studies, researches and projects carried out in the course curriculum, I would try to reflect my understanding of the subject onto this essay and comprehend it with utmost potential. MINI or commonly known as MINI Cooper was a brain child of a decorated automotive designer Sir Ales Singsongs. It has become a legend in the automotive industry and perhaps the most recognizes in the world maybe after Volkswagen Battle. This car made actually wrote history and became a ‘British Icon’ in the world.
We could get an idea about the popularity and status of the car by knowing the fact that it was awarded “European Car of the Century Award” and second in ‘Global car of the Century’ Just behind Ford’s Model T (This Just In: Model T gets Award, 1999) Sir James Tyson a famous British inventor once said “One f the most fun inventions of my lifetime is the MINI” (Anon. , 2001). MINI began its manufacturing in 1959 at a factory in Lingered, I-J under the ownership British Motor Company with the first car to get front wheel drive.
At all inventions this one was also born out the necessity as an answer of an affordable car in response to the infamous ‘Suez Fuel Crisis’. Thus the result was MS 1, Morris MINI Minor & Austin Seven. It revolutionized the small car industry in Britain and laid down foundation for many to follow. However the Journey of this British icon was never a smooth ride. This company faced many challenges and were controlled by different companies before settling with BMW in 1999.
Owned by BMW it was taken over by British Leland in 1968 and then by Rover Group in 1986 till the time BMW bought the Rover group in 1994 and subsequently kept the entire share of MINI in 1999 when BMW sold Rover Group. In all this urban chaos, there was one thing that the marketing team of MINI was very capable of doing; repositioning of the brand. It was vitally important for the company to reposition itself because it was not Just a car, but rather a British symbol f excellence thus it mounted extra pressure in living up to the expectation.
MINI won many accolades in its career. Be it three times winner of Monte Carlo Rally Championship in 1964, 65 & 67 to making numerous cars of the year, time and time again (Mini. Co. UK, 2014). This only helped the marketing team with substantial weighing for the publicity of the brand. Marketing for MINI is not Just for a car, it’s the brand itself. Your brand resides within the hearts and minds of customers, clients, and prospects. It is the sum total of their experiences and perceptions, some of which you can influence, and mom that you cannot (Lake, 2014).
Thus MINI has become more than Just a brand. Therefore it became imperative from the initial years of the company to maintain the decorum of the brand on top of the product. However since the takeover by BMW it has changed a bit. Where BMW implements the exceptional standards in the marketing strategies its automotive, they try to influence the same for MINI as well. After 2001, when BMW re launched MINI with almost 130% makeover from the previous MINI, the star of the show was MINI Car itself, not the brand, not the British icon, rather Just the car.
There was it where the Marketing for MINI came in to action and launched probably one of the most successful and widespread marketing campaign, MINI – NOT NORMAL and MINI – THE ADVENTURE STORY. Just to give an idea on the success of the campaign, Just a video ad on Youths of MINI Not Normal got more than 1. 4 Million views in less than 5 weeks and the video was shared for more than 12,500 times on social networking sites. This was all in Germany (crossing, 2014).
Critics might cry “brand dilution”, but Bum’s already shown its skill in expanding the MINI range without diminishing its appeal among the trendy young hangs at whom it’s pitched (Telegraph, 2013). This could only have been possible be the help of the meticulous and well executed marketing campaigns, marketing gimmicks, concentric strategies and exceptional exploitation of publicity portals. Many industry specialists are saying that BMW are doing things with MINI what the Rover group dreamt of doing. It may be largely because of the growing mantra that there is no room for sentimentality in big businesses anymore.
It’s all about making the best figures and profit in the market. And luckily the new owner of MINI had all the right tricks up its levees to make it a huge success. Shawn McGrath, Executive Creative Director of Iris said that “Minim’s unique positioning was under attack and the brand needed to re- establish its core brand DNA as the most friendly and inventive brand in the category. Most importantly, they needed to convince cynics that ‘you’re not Just paying for the badge’ when you buy a MINI (Disheartening, 2014).
As she worked on one of the most important and challenging campaign of MINI, her Job was to bring back the adventure of the lost MINI-Consumer relations it had. However this time it was the MINI car as an individual, not the brand. Comparing the figures above, it’s visible that the entire MINI brand accounts 2nd largest chunk of share when it comes to sales growth of all BMW cars in USA. This is more or likely same throughout the world where MINI has captured a market share. This has only been possible of the advance marketing planning carried out by the company.
Minim’s marketing style can be classified as what it is known as Strategic Marketing. Lambing (1977) said “The role of strategic marketing is to lead the firm towards attractive economic opportunities, that is, opportunities that are adapted to TTS resources and know and offer a potential for growth and profitability’. It’s a growing terminology which more and more companies are using in order to maximize their potential on marketing expenditure. One of the future aspects of the MINI that will continue; Strategic Marketing has helped MINI to exploit the resource fundamentals to maximize brand information proximity in people’s mind.
Source: printmakers. Com After Bum’s takeover, it was relatively hard for the Marketing team of MINI to connect to the people who loved MINI; especially in the I-J. People who have always en a MINI-Fanatic were somewhat disheartened when the reigns of their bellowed car brand were given to a German car manufacture. It was evident that the first thing they couldn’t have coped up with was MINI is not a British car anymore. This is where it was a challenging task for the marketing team of MINI to convince people & retain the true identity of MINI.
First thing that came up was setting up the marketing objectives to efficiently publicist the brand or rather this time around the car. It was a daunting task for the marketing agencies to salvage the brand identity of brand MINI in the eyes of MINI over. However instead recuperating from the recent turnover, MINI went with a full scale hardcore marketing campaign for the All New MINI. It was a difficult task but not from BMW standards as it was time to re-evaluate the marketing strategies of MINI.
They needed to reassign the Marketing Strategies with a prime aspect of ‘Repositioning the MINI in the small car market in the UK and plus recapture the essence of fun, energetic, exciting and revolution car it was in people’s mind. PORTER 5 FORCE ANALYSIS Threats of entrants Bargaining power of supplier Rivalry among existing competitors buyers Threat of bustiest of products & services Porter’s Five Forces of Competitive Position Analysis were developed in 1979 by Michael E Porter of Harvard Business School as a simple framework for assessing and evaluating the competitive strength and position of a business organization (COMA, 2014).
MINI has many competitors in the small car segment market. Ranging from Fiat 500 to Wad Beetle, Renault Clio to Ford Focus and many more. They all comes close to same price range with almost similar specification . Therefore MINI has mixed reviews on the Potter 5 Force analysis. We consider I-J market in this scenario as the exults changes applied in different market conditions. Rivalry among existing competitors is comparatively HIGH most of the competitors are of same size and scale. It’s still a relatively small industry with the return on investment scales down longer time duration and growth is also very low.
And the most important thing is that leaving the market is extremely difficult especially in case of MINI when it bears the lifetime of reputation. The production cost to even leave the market is too high. Bargaining power of Buyers segment has medium rating switching to alternative product is feasible now with the abundance of competitors price competitions. However it benefits MINI as well where loyal customers are still attracted towards the notion of buying MINI. MINI are still made in Oxford Britain so an added advantage for MINI, however so does many other substitute cars.
Threat of substitute of products & services is also moderate medium because there is no feedback for customer to substitute to other brand but on the same hand customer existing and aspiring have close relation with MINI. Brand loyalty is extremely high with MINI subsequently because of new globalizes market, the urge to try something new leads customers try new brands. Bargaining power of supplier is very high because if we talk I-J market, MINI being one of the most unique and iconic design, its solely and completely manufactured in the I-J.
Therefore components supplied to MINI are very specific and customized according to customer satisfaction. MINI can’t afford to choose between suppliers to maintain consistency. Therefore there is very high start up cost to switch between suppliers. Lastly the Threats of new entrants, It’s a medium to low threat as well because the laws & market is fairly competitive thus companies can enter small car industry very easily, ND in fact small car industry in the I-J if one of the largest. However there are limited specialized suppliers as there are all in close proximity of Europe but not in the UK.
Customers are extremely brand loyal for MINI. Therefore driving far from the socio-economic barriers for the marketing team was a tough task to compete with however this time we were talking about the MINI car, thus it made it easier for them to make this transition because of the stature it had in people belief. Marketing Team of MINI simply reignited the long lost passion of MINI cars in people minds by going full on with the love of owning a mint. However the biggest hurdle this time around compared to the late ass’s was the abundance of competition.
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS The five forces’ analysis has examined the overall industry and is a starting point in assessing a company’s competitive position (Drummond, et al. , 2008). After the figures of 2012, BMW/MINI captured 4 largest share in the UK market. It is a substantial amount in the market share that made BMW decide to invest more in MINI to possible enter into new market or expand its market share even more. BMW announced a Emma investment programmer for the Mini car. The extra funding, which was on top of the
Emma UK investment announced in 2011 by BMW, was to be used to increase the number of MINIS made as well as build up to 10 new models (Trojan, 2012). The small car industry in the I-J is growing affected by the growing prices and scarcity of fuel and emissions laws that strengthen every now and then. The worst part of being a player of small car manufacturing company, and that too a high-end hatch-back cars, that you not only have to compete with the other automobile car manufactures but motorcycles as well.
ANIONS/BOSTON MATRIX A brief idea of where the myriad of cars offered by MINI stands in the matrix. MINI get a tough competition here as well because the young, energetic and enthusiastic target audience they want to cater to; the entire Motorcycle industry cater to the same, especially the supervise industry for which BMW is yet another big player with some best-in-the-class supervise. Thus even with parent company one has to compete against sometime.
Key competitor like the Fiat 500 gives the most difficult time to MINI, but car like Ford Focus, Renault Clio, Alfa Romeo Mitt, Wad Beetle, Mazda MIX & 3 series, Citroen DB’S, Audit AAA and parent company car BMW Series. However MINI has a 2. 3% market hare in the I-J they have broken their sales record as almost 390,000 new MINIS have reached British roads since the car was launched in 2001 (Cooper, 17 March 2013). This may give us an idea the marketing plan is working and the marketing strategic tools that were made to overcome any barriers are succeeding.
SOOT Another very simple and probably most common way to analyses the market is to carry out a SOOT analysis. It is necessary for organization to understand its capabilities and map it with the opportunities/threat faced by the company. While the opportunity and threats could be generalizes to most companies in an industry, detergents and weaknesses are specific to a company (Pentagonal, 2010). SOOT analysis is not the best tools when it comes to fining out the key elements involved in the marketing approach, however it tends to give a general idea on the industry itself and how it’s behaving in current times.
Strong brand reputation Strong Aspirations values Unique designs Millions of customizable options Fuel Efficient All British Production Skilled Workers High Cost Structure High price due higher cost Limited global presence Extremely competitive market Increment in market share production Salvation of rand image The All New MINI Technology Hybrid Tech of BMW Very niche for majority market People’s perception of being a German Car Investment by AUDIT into their small car project Even though it may seem very generic, but it gives an idea of what MINI in current times dealing with.
Thus gives an inclination of the steps to be taken by the Marketing team of MINI in future. MINI has certain set of strengths which makes it a big contender in the small car market; however there are certain weaknesses like limited global range that the marketing team have to look into thus it helps in may be exploring new markets for continued growth of the company. Another way the marketing would be the best prophet in spreading the word, if MINI or rather BMW comes up with a Hybrid MINI. Bum’s Hybrid technology is world renowned and we could see I foreseeable future that BMW may install a hybrid engine in one of the hatchback.
PESTLE ANALYSIS & STEP PESTLE analysis is in effect an audit of an organization’s environmental influences with the purpose of using this information to guide strategic decision-making. The assumption is that if the organization is able to audit its current environment and sees potential changes, it will be better placed than its competitors to respond to changes (Morrison, 2014) MINI pestle analysis highlights the area where the marketing team could come into play and make a significant contribution in present scenarios as well as future competence.
Therefore by the help of these analytical tools, Minim’s marketing team is able to position itself in the best possible way. Source: Group Presentation Assignment 1 TTS Thus Minim’s marketing regime after 2000 revolved around the concept of ‘Brad Mapping and how to select new target market and cater to existing or new target audience. Product positioning relates to a task of ensuring that company’s products or services that it offers to the market occupies a pre-determined place in selected target markets, relative to competition in that market.
This process is also known as Brand Mapping (Reynolds & Lancaster, 2005). In came the NOT NORMAL & MINI ADVENTURE campaign to set aside the not so normal way to do publicity. The 130% revised appearance of the new MINI was one of the best facets for the marketing team for which they exploited it to the utmost details. However the challenge to preserve the symbolic appeal was a daunting task. Therefore the creative strategies the MINI marketing team finalized were also an extent of emotional nature.
Source for Both: Simms & Trot Minim’s Functional Repositioning centered on emphasizing improved reliability, build quality & practicality (C & P, 2014). MINI did what it does best, I. E. Full scale media campaign. Plus the condition was more the unconventional, the better. It showed how strategic marketing can land perfectly on the target and win accolades. The MINI ADVENTURE STORY ad won its place in the Guinness World Records as the shortest movie ever made. Minim’s excellent marketing through Guerrilla Advertising are now a stature statement in the world and a source of some of the best case studies.
These were some of the examples of the brilliant ads used by MINI at various media platforms. Extensive website marketing was carried out to cater the 35 million internet user that consisted a majority of target audience at a part of exposure. According to Shawn McGrath, Executive Director of Iris, the agency responsible for the MINI-Not Normal campaign said “MINI drivers love their cars so much they are more like fans than owners. It’s a relationship that’s NOT NORMAL.