Profile: BMW director of brand steering, brand management & marketing services Dr Uwe Ellinghaus

Uwe Ellinghaus has a problem: the ‘Ultimate driving machine’ brand positioning BMW fans are so fond of has grown too narrow. The brand needs to make itself more approachable, more relevant to a wider audience to stay competitive. So the head of BMW brand management and group marketing services has a new, global effort that moves from what BMW ‘is’ to how it makes you ‘feel’: Joy. It’s something that everyone — purists and newcomers alike — can understand and relate to, he says.

Notably, it adds warmth to a brand whose strength has come from an almost clinical, uncompromising approach to marketing. The brand’s communication is signed off against a master checklist, and includes the fact that there will never be a global co-branding partnership or celebrity endorsement. After all, it’s only they who will gain from appearing in the ads. Such arrogance is palpable, and Ellinghaus knows it. In fact, he relishes it. “I know it’s arrogant but, to be honest, we can afford to be.”

Atifa Silk BMW has hired a global lead agency for the first time in its history. What does the appointment mean for your roster shops?

Uwe Ellinghaus We have appointed GSD&M globally to be the driving force behind the ‘Joy’ campaign. However, you can’t have one agency doing all the marketing for all the markets. You need people who are locally familiar, or those who know dealer advertising and can react to market peculiarities quickly. That’s why we have dozens of agencies — for example, Publicis in Singapore — to adapt our campaigns to local needs.

But it is fair to say the degree of freedom for local creative ideas isn’t what it used to be. We noted our advertising was fragmented when local agency partners had creative freedom. As a global brand for a cosmopolitan audience, we need one big theme, one big campaign for every launch. Yes, markets need to have the f lexibility for changes as no one size fits all. But they need to take direction from the global lead agency. It is necessary for us to be consistent the world over.


Atifa Silk The BMW brand is built on ‘performance’. How does ‘Joy’ take this
forward?

Uwe Ellinghaus This is our first global campaign. Many people were highly sceptical. But with the
‘Joy’ campaign, we have shown that one theme, which is a positive emotion that all human beings share, can be interpreted and slightly adapted to all cultural backgrounds.

In some countries, the local marketing department adapted the ‘Joy’ campaign to appeal to their audiences using religious motifs, f lowers and masks, for example. But when we looked at the monitoring results, the non-adaptive campaigns worked better. While local adaptations were received as a sign of respect to the country’s culture and appreciated as a positive gesture, they were no longer considered to be BMW. It just wasn’t authentic that we tried to give the impression we were Chinese, Malaysian, or Indonesian.


Atifa Silk Can you share some of the results?

Uwe Ellinghaus The campaign was particularly strong in appealing beyond traditional car nuts. We were able to show a more invitational, brighter character of the BMW brand and it had a very favourable reaction from premium customers driving competitive brands. It made them think twice about BMW. That’s exactly what we wanted achieve.


Atifa Silk What new opportunities exist for auto marketing, and what are your expectations for the future of the industry?

Uwe Ellinghaus The automotive industry will remain one of the toughest businesses to be in. Competition is fierce, and will remain so. Premium manufacturers, however, will be much better off than volume manufacturers. Yes, we were hit during the recession. But there are still many wealthy customers who want a car that does more than just take them from A to B.

There are also opportunities in demographic developments. People are still active when they are
older, and they are still buying new cars when they are 70 or 75. This is a great opportunity because let’s face it, age and wealth very often correlate. This is why we aren’t worried that many societies such as Japan are ageing.


Atifa Silk What makes you optimistic about BMW’s positioning in the market?

Uwe Ellinghaus We never talk about the competition. I will only say that we take them all seriously but we fear none of them. It’s amazing how many marketers think that you can emulate the success of BMW. I struggle to understand why these rival brands should become a real threat if they don’t even have their own identity and nothing that sets them apart. Why would anyone buy a good copy if there’s an original available?


Atifa Silk Is there a danger that as China’s weight in the industry grows, carmakers risk becoming too dependent on it?

Uwe Ellinghaus In just a few years China’s growth has far exceeded expectations. It is now the biggest market in Asia, and also the third biggest market in the world for BMW, overtaking the UK and behind Germany and the US. The growth rates are striking, and we expect still further growth in China. That said, we have always had the strategy that we do not want to rely on a certain region or country. Yes, we take China seriously, we are developing our dealer network, but we want to grow globally. We never put all our eggs in one basket.


Atifa Silk Japan continues to come under pressure. Will sales bounce back?

Uwe Ellinghaus Japan is the second biggest market in Asia after China, and it is in a very difficult situation currently. I’ve just come from Tokyo, where my colleagues presented slides that showed the overall car market in terms of the number of cars sold is at the same level as it was in 1973.  That is a situation that no manufacturer ever envisaged. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that they have very strict import tax regulations and CO2 emissions requirements.

We fortunately have engines that meet these standards. But it goes without saying that particularly for a manufacturer of luxury cars it is tougher to meet these very strict regulations than it is for small car manufacturers. We do still see growth opportunities but it is a mature market, so we do not expect growth rates like in China, where currently the market seems to double every 18 months or so.


Atifa Silk In this ‘age of responsibility’ how do you see your customer changing?

Uwe Ellinghaus It makes me optimistic that car manufacturers are questioned about their social responsibility in terms of emission and fuel consumption. What we don’t want is to greenwash the BMW brand, or to reposition it in any way. We have a philosophy that we call ‘efficient dynamics’. You don’t have to have a bad conscience if you drive a BMW.

That’s something that helps us in Japan and China, for example, where environmental awareness is growing significantly.


Atifa Silk How do you predict what’s going to be important to consumers in the future?

Uwe Ellinghaus I’ve given up such predictions because so many previous forecasts have proven wrong or flawed. Topics have come up that nobody had on the agenda, and this is why both in the way we engineer and develop our cars and the way we market them, we need to be flexible and prepared.

Frankly speaking, I couldn’t care less how old our customers are, the share of female customers, or split of ethnicity. I want the brand to be attractive to all these consumers. Niche marketing is something that I’m very reluctant to do.


Atifa Silk How do you balance mass appeal with exclusivity?

Uwe Ellinghaus It’s tricky. We take a two-fold approach. While our premium target groups can be reached more effectively through below-the-line activities such as direct marketing and events, we still need presence in mass media to also appeal to consumers who can only dream of owning a BMW.

Let’s face it, to a certain extent, the appeal of a premium brand is knowing other people would like to have one as well, but probably can’t afford it. So, I pay a lot of attention to the perception of the BMW brand among audiences that are far off our typical target consumers. First of all, they might become our target customers one day. Secondly, even if they don’t, premium brands need to have wide social acceptance and appeal so at least people understand why somebody buys a BMW even if they don’t have the means themselves.


Atifa Silk How have you adapted to the impact of technology and social media?

Uwe Ellinghaus Below the age bracket of 60, almost everyone’s on the internet these days and that’s why we do far more web marketing than we ever envisaged a couple of years ago. It also means on-site and off-site our online presence must be state-of-the-art.

In my eyes, there is a fundamental flaw in the way marketers use social media. Many marketers seem to be of the opinion that people use the web for information. Yes, the older generation uses the internet to find information — a brochure or test drive — before they make a purchase. But younger people are not necessarily looking for information.

They are using social media to express an opinion. And we need to be relevant to this target audience, and to show that — even if they don’t ask a specific question, aren’t interested in buying a car, getting the brochure or a test drive — we value their comments. Social media is about interaction and dialogue. It’s not about information.


Atifa Silk Where does search sit within your digital marketing mix?

Uwe Ellinghaus BMW is clearly number one in the industry in search engine optimisation and search engine marketing, which we do to be present in the paid section of search machines. Google’s paid part is yellow but many people can’t tell the difference between what’s paid or not. We also do SEO and we look at the algorithms that help us ensure we come up as soon as possible in the unpaid sections. We know that people don’t scroll down and we need to be in the first 10 to 50 hits or we won’t get any traffic.

This is an area where marketing has really changed and I sometimes struggle, even inside the company, to explain to some people how important it is. Online is the most often used channel throughout the purchase process. And, 78 per cent of our customers in all the countries we have surveyed in the US, Europe and Asia use the internet during the car search and purchasing process — early on to get information and finally to configure the car for specific details and to get in contact with dealers. That’s why our online presence must be state-of-the-art.


Atifa Silk Beyond digital, what are some of the non-traditional marketing approaches you have used?

Uwe Ellinghaus Branded content is something that we do continuously. Product placement on TV and in movies is still relevant. It doesn’t have to be a blockbuster. Often a local TV series can have great coverage and do a better job in raising awareness.

Next year a major Hollywood movie will come out and we will have a car in it more prominently than any BMW ever featured in a big movie — even more prominently than in James Bond. And I got in for an absolute bargain because the famous actor and producer behind the film fell in love with a BMW and approached us.


Atifa Silk What criteria do you have for finding suitable ‘partners’ for BMW?

Uwe Ellinghaus We do co-branding, but not on a global scale. Frankly, that comes from arrogance on our side. Who are we that we need to tie our brand to any other premium global brand? Will they not benefit more from being associated with BMW? The same holds true for celebrities.

We have local ambassadors but we don’t want a famous global face to be associated with BMW. You never know whether they will be doped up one day and you can’t predict what might happen to their reputation. I also can’t see what we would gain.

We have such an educated, self-confident group of Alpha animal customers they wouldn’t be attracted by a famous actor anyway.

This article was originally published in the November 2010 issue of Campaign Asia-Pacific.