Buying the Experience
Posted on February 11, 2008
Filed Under What's New |
The point about BMW cars and their exceptional sales record - as global warming has become ever more important to us the pubic, BMW has snatched number 1 spot in the race for overall global premium brand leader (that means right now it returns about 1,5 billion Euro a year to the Quandt family, half owners of the marque) - is not just the object lesson it provides in modern gullibility. BMW is an example of how important the intangible aspects of our lives have become. And what the future holds.
BMW’s success lies in part in its extensive brand management. Every showroom in the world is supposed to offer the customer the same brand experience. But BMW is also the most skilled in manipulating the brand. Here is the ultimate driving machine, the petrol head’s dream, you might say. Yet over the past decade it has become a girl’s car. It’s sexy, bustly, shapely. Good from the front and the back.
Drive it and you wonder why anyone would pay a premium for its drivability and why in countries like ireland sales are going through the roof. The 3 series is so taught that on Irish roads you’re risking your bones. The 5 series by contrast is just not manoeverable enough for the speed it lulls you into, once you’re off a dual carriageway. In continental Europe BMW’s low profile tyres, constructed to continue driving even as the tyre goes flat, are a major cause of noise pollution and not just on motorways. For a while the EU was looking at how to force companies using these particular low profile tyres to compensate suburbanites who were losing sleep as their neighbours “tore” home at a sultry but deafening 50 Km an hour.
What BMW does offer though is a safe investment in your status. You are looking good even if the ride makes you seasick. The new BMW world showroom in Munich has been set up especially to help refine your sense of status. As the auto comes in for more knocks, the brand challenge is to make owners feel better about owning expensive gas guzzlers. BMW’s Munich showroom is the first centre for brand refinement, a place you can go to and have the edges knocked off your rugged appreciation of the car.
And this is why I believe BMW conquers all and points the way to the future. There will come a point I’m sure when it won’t actually be necessary to buy a BMW to feel the BMW effect. What will be necessary is to pass through a BMW brand refinement centre. Once in there a number of things might happen to you but handing over a cheque for a car may not be one of them.
You might for example buy a top of the range Saeco coffee maker. At 2,000 Euro you’ll notice a familiarity in the nosing of the machine’s front-end. Designed by a BMW design subsidiary, it could turbo charge your morning and give you something to talk about over dinner while you keep the Renault hidden in the garage.
The other possibility for you in a BMW brand refinement centre is simply to go there in the way some kids love to walk into a Disney shop. The comingling of your presence and BMWs could have an effect that would be little different to entering a museum foyer and thinking: today, culture.
The very important point about BMW’s ascent beyond the material world is how it points the way to a future of intangibles. Everyday on Facebook right now an intangible is offered for sale at $1…. well today’s is a free Dummies Guy. Everyday at BMW brand refinement centres there’s some spiritual goodies to be had. The trick for BMW is to stop building brand refinement centres
in order that people can get this fix. It doesn’t make sense to put up bricks and mortar in order to sell feelings.
I’ve already pitched the proposition to them - that brand refinement sensation can better be distributed in virtual spaces like Second Life. In fact there are few better places to do brand refinement.
People can come into Sl without stepping into their cars, without revealing which car they are driviing. And once there they can be blessed with all the BMW oils. People will pay for it because people will also pay for Dummies Guys. They don’t need anything materially back for their money. It is one discovery of the social network generation - sentiments and fuzzy feelings are enough. And as a premier packager of feelings companies like BMW need to move on to where the real action is. Not cars. Air kisses.
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I traded down to a BMW from a Corvette and after owning three of them, I have to say their reliability and durability astounds me. Few American cars can roll through more than 200,000 miles on a single engine. That’s been my experience with two separate 320 sedans. That reliability is part of the brand and makes me consider walking to Munich to buy another.
No need to walk Bernie - use a landboard. And save thousands by investing in a Toyota Ceilica - it will do you a good 300,000 miles.
ooops I meant Celica
I have two brothers who drive rice burners. We used to own a Suzuki as well. You can’t get the reassuring sound of that a BMW door makes when it closes so I won’t be going Japanese. However, when I lived in Germany most of my neighbours drove Japanese cars.