MINI Cooper has been pretty innovative in building a brand experience.  For starters, they understand how their brand can engage potential buyers with smart and somewhat irreverent thinking (an approach that’s very appealing to MINI-types).  They get that they can strengthen the brand experience with entertaining tools that suck you into the features of their cars – just check out their configurator. And they use the data they collect there to deepen the MINI brand experience with prospects without being annoying.  In fact, MINI does an excellent job of building an infectious brand experience – right up to the point that you walk into a dealership to experience the actual car.

The MINI brand experience outside the dealership encourages thinking differently about owning and driving a car. Inside the dealership it feels false.  Dressing car sales people up in polo shirts and surrounding them with the hip design and messaging isn’t enough to extend the brand experience. Nothing seems more anti-MINI than the old school sales person who defines success by how much they can get a prospect to pay for a car.  Although MINI is better than most other car dealers (and isn’t it interesting that we still refer to them as “dealers”), they still operate fundamentally the same.  As a result, the experience doesn’t translate at the sales desk.  The brand experience doesn’t ring true.  It feels more like lipstick on a pig.

MINI is like most businesses in that they think about building the brand from the outside in.  It would make more sense to start building the brand experience at the most critical interaction – when money is changing hands.  Starting here creates real proof that the brand is integral to what you do.  It’s part of the way you act as a company.  Otherwise, your brand is reduced to just clever messages.

By the way, MINI sends out a real engaging owner’s kit two months after the purchase.  Most other dealers would do this to help capture service dollars (where dealerships make most of their money).  But it doesn’t make sense for MINI since they include the first three years of service as part of the purchase price.  The explanation?  Perhaps it’s an attempt to rescue the brand experience from the thrashing it received at the point of sale.