In order
to support the journeys their customers take in a comprehensive and integral
manner, automotive manufacturers are faced with the question of how to effectively
set up their end-to-end customer experience management. MINI is regarded as a
pioneer in adopting an excellent approach to customer centricity, and in doing
so continuously develops the brand and corporate processes along the customer
journey. How this is achieved is described by Ulrike von Mirbach, Head of MINI
Europe, and Wolf Ingomar Faecks, Executive Board Member Serviceplan Group SE,
Plan.Net Group and The Marcom Engine, in an interview with Lünendonk. The
Marcom Engine has been responsible for pan-European and data-driven product and
marketing communications for the BMW and MINI brands since 2020.
LÜNENDONK: Ms. von Mirbach, you have been with MINI for 17 years and have been Head of MINI Europe since July this year. Where is the brand today?
ULRIKE
VON MIRBACH: Over
the course of time, MINI has positioned itself as a strong brand in the market.
Thinking in new ways, seeing challenges as opportunities, taking people’s
wishes and needs into account in an open and unconventional way – all this is
firmly anchored in the tradition of the brand that is MINI. We know what is
required of us and understand how to encounter our customers and fans with the
right emotions at the right instances. This is reflected in our very active
community of millions of fans – not only on the street, but also online with
hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram.
It is clear
to us that we have to focus on our three core target groups – customers &
fans, multipliers and retail partners – in order to be successful. That’s why,
together with The Marcom Engine, we are firmly embedding experience management
into our marketing and sales organization as a central element.
LÜNENDONK: That sounds like a huge makeover. So let’s take a look behind the scenes at what’s been going on. Can you please outline how you are going about this?
ULRIKE VON MIRBACH: With pleasure. First, we put the
customer journey at the center of our transformation. This means that everyone
in our organization – regardless of discipline – asks ourselves what added
value we can offer our customers at each touchpoint along the individual
customer journey. It is important to us to put people at the center of every
step we take in our brand communication, taking into account their respective
needs and emotions. This is because we believe that customer centricity is not
just a buzzword but ‘the’ differentiator of the moment in order to keep your
finger on the pulse of the times – or, more specifically, on the pulse of your
fans and prospects.
LÜNENDONK: How exactly do you feel the pulse of MINI fans?
WOLF INGOMAR FAECKS: We continuously monitor the online
and offline behavior of our prospects and customers and analyze the resulting
data for relevant behavioral patterns. This places us very close to our fans
and allows us to react quickly should their behavior or needs change.
We derive the requirements for
marketing and communication measures from our integral and comprehensive
customer experience management and implement them at the appropriate points so
MINI customers can see and experience them at the right time.
ULRIKE VON MIRBACH: Just take a look at the
communication taking place in the social media community: our fans
enthusiastically post photos of their MINI, talk to each other and ask about
anything and everything to do with MINIs, and share stories about their latest
road trips. This creates a genuine dialog with added value for the individual.
Our MINI sales advisors throughout Eu-rope – as the face of our brand – play a
central role here for the customers they serve and also for us as a brand. They
act as “key opinion customers and sales experts”.
LÜNENDONK: An end-to-end customer experience management approach certainly places complex demands on an organization. How do you make the networking, the individual marketing and communication silos work?
ULRIKE VON MIRBACH: At MINI, we are constantly
optimizing processes so that we can respond quickly and with agility to
external influences and new requirements. To achieve this, we are developing
MINI into a customer-centric organization – with integral and comprehensive
horizontal experience management, an effective marketing and communications
strategy, a technology architecture tailored to the strategy and, last but not
least, the requisite corporate processes.
WOLF INGOMAR FAECKS: These four components are aligned
at MINI to pave the way for experience management, track KPIs across individual
channels, facilitate integral and comprehensive cross-channel management and
optimization, and accelerate feedback from the customer data to product
development.
LÜNENDONK: So you could say that MINI is undergoing a process in which you are continuously optimizing brand communication in a data-driven way?
ULRIKE VON MIRBACH: Absolutely. Nevertheless, having
the right gut feeling is not something you should forego either.
WOLF INGOMAR FAECKS: By taking the technology landscape
to the next level, we can align performance management with the customer
journey to optimize touchpoints. With the help of a test-learn-adapt approach,
we are continuously testing different designs, presentations and selections for
their effectiveness. Atomic asset production makes it possible for us to play
out assets in a more specific way, optimize the use of advertising media and
implement new communication ideas.
ULRIKE VON MIRBACH: So this is how we continuously
review the effectiveness of our measures throughout the entire sales funnel and
optimize them where necessary. We opt for various, innovative implementations
in the result, and offer our fans a MINI-specific brand experience which in
turn satisfies customer expectations, increases brand loyalty and leads to
higher sales figures in the long term.
WOLF INGOMAR FAECKS: We can therefore say that a
product marketing loop is created which we can feed with the relevant product
and communication data around the clock with the help of customer data
management (CDM) and a digital asset management (DAM) system. Accordingly, this
product marketing loop also has a major influence on how digital media assets
are deployed and played out.
In this way, we are moving away from
a rigid campaign logic and towards individualized always-on communication in
which motif content, tonality and messages are individually compiled and played
out on the basis of data points. This process is largely automated. In this
area, we are in the midst of a transformation in terms of technology and
processes.
LÜNENDONK: What exactly does this mean for your corporate structures?
ULRIKE VON MIRBACH: We are committed to a common
European approach. This is not an end in itself, but a prerequisite for taking
personalized, data-driven marketing to the next level and creating
cross-channel management and a consistent brand experience that works across
all EU countries. This is because the brand MINI is firmly rooted as an
emotional premium brand in all European countries. In what we refer to as core
units, we create digital standards that are fed by the findings and needs of
the European countries.
Based on country goals and budgets
and standards from the central core units, recommendations are then developed
in hubs for country organizations to implement and activate. Al-ways with a
strong feedback loop. We act efficiently and consistently across all European
markets in this way, playing out the respective campaign nuances along our
brand promise. The characteristic MINI feeling and the individual, urban
mobility character noticeably permeate every brand communication. At the
same time, we increase efficiency alongside effectiveness.
LÜNENDONK: Surely steering the campaigns in multiple countries in this manner also has an impact on the team structure.
WOLF INGOMAR FAECKS: Teams are now working much more
cross-functionally, with people contributing their different skills to solve
complex requirements together. For the MINI Editions, for example, we planned,
designed, produced and executed a complex multi-channel campaign as part of a
fully integrated team.
LÜNENDONK: And how does that translate into concrete successes?
ULRIKE VON MIRBACH: For one thing, the flexibility of
the pan-European campaign allowed us to ensure that the brand experience was
consistent and aligned from the first point of contact through to the point of
purchase. Secondly, by involving the countries and their requirements at an
early stage, we were able to intensify the activation of the campaign across
the countries. The result: an actionable response from more prospects using the
same amount of resources with an accelerated speed of response.
LÜNENDONK: How important is the team here?
ULRIKE VON MIRBACH: Paramount. Our successes and the continuous development are due to our closely inter-linked sales and marketing teams. This is because each individual in our European teams brings different experiences and expertise to the table, and at MINI they have the chance to incorporate this and “put it on the road” – in true MINI style. I’m therefore delighted that we are all focused on the brand and our sales with a 360- degree mindset – true to our MINI motto “We are all different, but pretty good together.”