What Was the Strategic Role and Significance of the Z3 Launch for Bmw Within Bmw’s Product Line?

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Money: The case didn’t mention much about how much BMW allocated to each of the media platforms they advertised. The only estimate we received was for the movie, which was about $40,000 for the fees. The total amount of money BMW spent was $87.5 million in 1995 for advertising, which was an average amount of money in comparison to how much other car companies spent.

Measurement: BMW measured success through Neiman Marcus by the number of limited edition “Bond Blue Gray” cars that were ordered through the magazine. There were 6,000 cars ordered from the magazine with only 100 cars available. BMW measured the number of hits the website got from the Z3, where people could customize their own cars. After adding the customization module, website hits tripled from 35,000 to 125,000. After Golden Eye was released where James Bond traded his Aston Martin in for the Z3, there were 9,000 preorders for the Z3 when there were a projected 5,000 preorders.

BMW implemented multiple marketing techniques in various advertising platforms because of two reasons. One was to rebrand BMW’s cars as the ultimate driving machine cars. Two, they had to keep the interest of the Z3 up to par, with a four month waiting period for the Z3 to be released after the Golden Eye premiered. BMW was successful in both of their goals. They were able to gain a considerable amount of market share with a higher demand for the cars than anticipated. BMW was able to successfully reach out to their target psychographic group by advertising on multiple media platforms that would speak to these people. BMW launched their advertising campaigns before Mercedes could release a comparable roadster car. BMW’s timing and their marketing techniques is what proved successful in their advertisement of the Z3.

One suggestion that I would have for BMW is to market their products more towards women. The stated objective was to market the Z3 towards both men and women in the psychographic group. However, a large part of BMW’s marketing scheme was marketing the car in a way that would characterize the owner of the car as James Bond: a wealthy, successful, handsome male who was able to get the girl and live a heroic life every man strives for. More specifically, it would be tailored towards a single man who is looking for a woman and attempting to appear more adventurous, heroic, or edgy. This was demonstrated in the Golden Eye, the Central Park debut, and in the Neiman Marcus advertisement. The advertisements in the TV and radio shows were not necessarily targeted towards men, but there was not any specific effort to target the advertisements towards women. The advertisements could’ve been tailored for a sporty car that makes a woman appear professional or “badass” and adventurous. BMW did a great job at targeting a male market for their cars, but there is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to advertising for both men and women.

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