Marketing is a tough appearance. You have to go between attention and duration and keep it catchy without getting kitsch. BMW met gold with “The Ultimate Driving Machine”, which arrived in the 1970s with the kind permission of Marketing Whiz Martin Puris. It is still widespread today. But there is another principle of the brand, extremely less known and rather controversial in its time. This is something ironic; If you consider that it is largely floating around a simple word: “joy”.
Why and how? BMW introduces “Joy”
The famous Slogan – “The Ultimate Driving Machine” – was age -old in the early nineties. Munich recorded a drop in sales, at least in comparison to its rampant success in the 1970s and 1980s, and decided that new marketing was the best way to get out of the break -in. “There was even a request from me to drop the ultimate driving machine,” says Carl Flesher, marketing director of BMW North America. BMW AG was targeting the introduction of a variant “Joy of driving” or “Free driving” in the USA. Flesher declined and – if they didn’t know – was re -assigned in the organization until 1992. But it would still take 15 years for the brand to “joy”.
When the global economy was standing in early 2008, BMW NA’s sales hired similarly. After selling a damn near 300,000 cars in early 2007, the brand managed to move only 195,502 units in 2009. Management shook things and put the BMW Na-CEO Tom Purves in Rolls-Royce and had to remove the last liveliest marketing, the concept of “joy” on the American market. “Purves always said that” joy “was not the ideal translation for” joy “,” says Patrick McKenna, head of marketing communication in periods for BMW NA. “He was always pretty decided against the word joy in communication.” The new boss – Jim O’Donnell – didn’t feel that way. In fact, he was stimulated with the global financial crisis, if at all, to find a global marketing solution in order to keep the costs low. The day became a presence in the USA, starting with the Superbowl in February 2010.
“Joy” in marketing, joy in driving
Joy started, but enthusiasts winced. “Within a few days”, the complaints according to BMW. Journalists lamed the brand because they had given up, as Peter Delorenzo put it: Jack Pitney was VP for marketing at that time and defended the campaign. He claimed that independent research painted a bleak opinion of the BMW drivers, whereby people often equate them with aggression and arrogance. “We are working on being more integrative and adding a little more humanity in the way we talk about the brand,” he said. He claimed to help and bring more new customers into the brand. The data show that he was right – BMW moved 220,113 cars in 2010.
Perhaps not surprisingly, BMW enthusiasts and loyalists weren’t so enthusiastic. Pitney received death threats for “changing the slogan” – although “The Ultimate Driving Machine” was still running at the same time as the new “Joy” campaign. Even dealers were strange at the time why the famous slogan was “replaced”. I was shocked, almost horrified, of the number of dealers who came to me and said: “What the hell is it? You give up the ultimate driving machine? ‘”
Joy has reappeared as a topic since 2010. Finally, the “heart of joy” leans. Unchanged, maybe forever, is the confidence of the brand in “The Ultimate Driving Machine”. Although joy can be a living descriptor for the BMW driver’s experience, it is certainly not a substitute for a classic.
Source: BMW USA
