User:Rolf Schmitt II./sandbox

The trail of MINI´s marketing is bold by a big challenge. When they launched the MINI (relaunched the old brand) they had some strategic options. One of the alternatives is to start a branding (Brand management). An aspect of branding is to focus on the customer by segmentation. But whom? Is there a typical MINI driver? How can they reach them? Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. It is the art of creating genuine costumer value ( Philip Kotler). The Marketing of MINI is based on the car itself. Much of the MINI personality comes from the uniqueness of the design and the exciting driving experience. It’s the one thing that its competitors do not have (Unique Selling Proposition). The history of the car makes it also a cultural icon. A Brand is a pack of signs and products, which is labelled by this sign. The product should have at least one feature that separates it in the eyes of costumer from the competitor products. Like mentioned above the brand achieve this separation by the car and its history. The image is energetic, cheeky, stylish, self-confident, reliable and exciting. The only thing the “MINI marketers” had to do was to pick-up this image and create the brand around it. MINI`s Marketing concept/Marketing mix (4 P`s): Price: The high price refers to the unique and cultural product; Product: Unique design, exciting driving experience; Place: Mostly direct distribution, high qualified and motivated staff, employees feel linked to the company and the car; Promotion:	Focused on direct marketing/dialog marketing, mostly via web based services, interaction of the customer, digital marketing by using digital outdoor and also Interactive outdoor events.

As mentioned before one important aspect of branding is to focus on the customer. Special on the customer needs. You can not use only mass marketing. There has to be a focus on direct marketing/dialog marketing. It starts with the mass market. But the customer needs are very different. So to coordinate the marketing mix to the customer needs you have to divide the mass market into homogenous pieces (Market segmentation). There are some different selection criteria. Most popular the socio-demographic criteria (age, sex, income…). Here was the first challenge for the MINI-marketers.

What are the most practical criteria to differentiate the mass market? What differs the potential MINI driver from others? Which attribute share all of them?

MINI`s answer is style, self-confident ion and reliability. They are individualists.

The second challenge is to create a marketing mix which is successful over a long term.