Situational Analysis Of Bmw Mini

"The people who brought you The Ultimate Driving Machine are introducing you to

The Ultimate Lifestyle Machine."

The MINI IMC Campaign: Situational Analysis

IMC Campaign Outline Produced by:

Linda Brozowski, Christina Gunn, Roland Hancock, Mike Nakamura, & Trudy Walter

MKT 467

Integrated Marketing Communications

Professor Joyce Nielsen

October 7, 2003

Situational Analysis

Overview/Intro

The small car market is set to grow by about 50% over the next ten to twelve years from the 8.4 million units sold in 2001. The market for premium products is clearly growing faster than the total market, particularly in the small car market. Many customers will not compromise safety, quality, driving characteristics, and individualism (BMW Group, 2003). Though BMW currently caters to the premium automotive market, other high-end competitors such as Mercedes also have products positioned to capture the entry market. This paper will provide a situational analysis of BMW's newest product endeavor, the MINI. It will include a SWOT analysis, strategic marketing objectives, target market description, internal and external environment analysis, and strategic decisions. The thorough assessments conducted will derive a strategic decision for launching the IMC campaign for the MINI.

SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis is an important tool for auditing an organization and its environment, which helps marketers focus on key issues such as competition, businesses processes, product development, etc. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Figure 1.1 shows a brief overview of MINI's SWOT analysis.

Strengths (Internal)

Ð'* Re-introduction of popular model under strong brand, BMW Group

Ð'* Targeted Group

Ð'* High quality performance

Ð'* Increased market share Weaknesses (Internal)

Ð'* Only one model with two variations to support one entity

Ð'* Improve quality

Opportunities (External)

Ð'* Entry market for loyalty to other BMW Group brands

Ð'* Moving into extended territories

Ð'* Growth forecasts in premium automotive market Threat (External)

Ð'* Competitor imitation of MINI

Ð'* Competitors alluring same target group with lower prices of high quality product

The brands of BMW Group are well known worldwide, which helps in our efforts to obtain brand loyalty at an earlier age by providing the option for a lower costing, high quality product. MINI's introduction into the worldwide market ended in 2002 with more than 144,000 cars sold; which went beyond the expectations of BMW Group and continues to contribute significantly to our success (Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, 2003). This incredible increase of sales also enabled BMW Group to increase our market share among all main automobile markets increasing our sales in the North American market by 20.4% (Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, 2003). BMW Group has proven with the MINI brand that there is a place for a premium car in the small car sector (Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, 2003).

With the MINI only available on more than 60 markets, or countries, around the world, we have an incredible opportunity to venture into new market areas. Currently our most popular markets are United Kingdom and United States. In the United States, the MINI Cooper won the "North American Car of the Year Award 2003", but the United Kingdom sold 34,715 units in one year (Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, 2003).

The biggest threat is the introduction of imitation MINI's or other comparable cars by our competitors. Daimler-Chrysler, Toyota, Ford Motor Company, and Volkswagen are some of our top competitors. These companies are also producing products aimed at a younger age group in hope of gaining loyalty to their brands. For example, Mercedes now has the C230 Kompressor Sport Coupe is strategically priced lower in hope of attracting the younger market.

There are two main weaknesses within our product and organization. First, there is only one model with two variations to support an entire entity. Secondly, we need to improve the product quality of the MINI to include higher-value equipment and more powerful engine versions (Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, 2003).

Strategic Marketing Objectives

Our marketing objective is to promote the BMW MINI to our target audience of driving consumers in their mid twenties to thirties with heavy television, print, and outdoor campaigning. The MINI will kick off its introduction with the first of seven new TV spots breaking on October 26th during Sunday Night Football on ESPN. The television campaign will continue to roll out over October and November on cable networks including CNBC, CNN, MTV and VH1. The strategy is to include this broad range of drivers offering them opportunities to take their driving experience to a whole new level, while gaining their trust and loyalty. Spot television buys will concentrate on morning news, prime time, late news, and weekend sporting events in top sales markets. We want to continually focus on our message to our consumer market of empowerment, independence, performance, value, and fun associated with taking ownership of the new MINI.

Print advertising, which includes a large concentration of gatefolds, will include similar messaging to that of the television ads and will begin appearing in the October issues of more than 50 magazine titles. A special two-page layout will appear in the Wall Street Journal, along with USA Today as our development team focuses on celebrating the reintroduction of the MINI. In addition to our print campaign, our MarCom team and multi-cultural agencies have developed print ads for Savoy, Ebony, Essence, African American on Wheels, Vogue En Espanol, Hispanic Business among others.

We will continue with our campaign with