Torque-ing up the Beemer

Torsten Müller-Ötvös drives a BMW 6 Series convertible one day and an X5 another. Enviable? Debbie Cai gets behind the wheel with he who lives and breathes the BMW brand for a quick spin around the block.

In town for a mere two days, BMW's central marketing and brand management senior vice president Müller-Ötvös had sat through five interviews that afternoon by the time I met him, but he looked and sounded like it was his first meeting of the day after a hearty frühstück (German for breakfast).

What's your background like?

I'm a car aficionado. I started with BMW fresh out of school in February 1988. I've been with the company since then, in a range of mainly marketing jobs, which I enjoy because they have been different and challenging.

What are the challenges you face in marketing BMW?

To keep the brand on pace with competitors and keep it exciting, thrilling and emotional under new conditions (environmental maybe) in business. To find new ways and new channels to approach customers, and find good stories behind our cars.

New channels?

It's all about the long tail. We have a department which is solely occupied with finding new innovative ways and channels for marketing. It's like an experimental testing department and it involves itself with things like YouTube, Facebook, Clipfish, blogs etc.

In YouTube, we have a video of a simulator of the new M3, which was displayed at the 62nd International Motor Show (IAA) Cars, the biggest motor show in Europe in September. We had a press conference earlier and one journalist uploaded the clip. It is really crazy. We now have over 500,000 views.

Do you feel a need to control such messages?

It's impossible to control. You can see examples of completely modified ad spots put onto YouTube. That has been done with our competitors and not us fortunately. You have to run with it, participate, and be in there.

Do you go to social networking sites?

Sometimes but only to stay on track. I get my people to send me URLs of such things and check them out. When we visit different cities, we do experiential walk-arounds to meet people from different branches to get insights on what's going on in society, in professions, and see how ad agencies think in different countries. You should have a clue what's going on.

BMW is represented in Second Life with our own island where we display our efficient dynamics measurements, energy saving measurements, hydrogen cars etc. I would be there to look into it but I would not spend my spare time there - in Second Life.

BMW's been leading in sales of luxury car brands in Singapore, what do you think of it?

When you look back 20 years, there was a clear parity regarding volume. There was Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Lexus etc. Now we are clearly the leader volume-wise and segment-wise. Of course the competitors are also ambitious and like to gain back their position so it's tough competition but good for the consumer.

Who's your target audience?

The BMW customer is definitely much younger than the Mercedes customer. And he's young not just in real age but at heart and mind too. That's why entrepreneurs, people who earn big money, are BMW owners.

You do a lot of sports marketing?

We link the brand a lot to racing, yachting and golfing. The first idea behind sport marketing is to link the brand to sports which fit from the way the sports are executed - it's an image thing. The second is sporting events are the perfect platform to meet customers. We can invite customers and prospects who have never driven a BMW. They have a chance to come into contact with us, and we let them drive.

With Formula 1, we not only invite people to our race tracks, we also have invented a concept called Pit Lane Park where we rebuild the pit lane where the cars come in and their wheels are get changed and all that and everyone who comes to the race track can go there. It doesn't cost you any money, you can get close to our cars, even change tyres, feel and smell the cars, see how they accelerate etc. This is something which loads up people and people spread word of mouth.

Will Pit Lane Park come here next year?

Let's wait and see. We must look into how to execute it because it's a night race so that's completely different.

We also invented an amateur sailing cup which was executed by our dealers. We had it close to a lake and it allowed us to get in touch with people and prospects; and interesting events make people tell their friends about it afterwards. This is what I call experiential marketing. Simple advertising doesn't work anymore.

You were involved in branding Mini in the beginning. What were you thinking then?

The original Mini, on the positive side, was a brand with emotion. It also caused a lot of negative emotion - but it had emotional potential, without which you will never succeed in building a premium brand. The brand was a rough diamond and we polished it in a completely new direction. We forgot its ‘British-ness' and made a modern brand with a culture completely different from BMW's. If we used the same tools and the same people as BMW, at the end of the day it would have been a BMW mini but it wasn't what we wanted.