Stand for something or fall for anything

Great column in AdAge yesterday. It's about BMW changing it's advertising slogan after 31 years. No longer The Ultimate Driving Machine, BMW will be touting itself as A Company of Ideas. According to the column's author, Al Ries, that slogan "Sounds more like General Electric than BMW," and I agree.

Early on in my advertising career, I read an article about rebranding that changed my outlook on the industry. A brand spends hundreds of millions of dollars in trying to stand for something in the eyes of the consumer, then when a new executive gets brought on board his desire is simply to leave his mark. And so those hundreds of millions are disregarded and as we say in Spanish "Borrón y cuenta nueva" (erase it and start from scratch).

When you are in a position like BMW is today (the leading European car on the US market) why would you mess with success? I know I'd be trying to find new ways to keep the "old" positioning alive. I mean isn't that enough of a challenge?

Back to Ries:

One of the reasons given by BMW's new executive VP for driving away from its ultimate driving machine slogan is the fact that a recent research study revealed that only 25 percent of its target market would consider buying a BMW. I think that's pretty good.

After all, you have to expect that some prospects would prefer an ultimate comfort machine, an ultimate economy machine, an ultimate capacity machine or an ultimate prestige machine. Even an ultimate Japanese machine or an ultimate American machine. No brand can appeal to everybody.

Again, I can't argue with Ries' logic. We'll keep an eye on BMW and its new campaign.