Building an order to enable the new Spartanburg Plant to build against customer specs (and therefore improve customer satisfaction).
The Marketing Plan.
The central goal of the marketing campaign was to insert the Z3 into the fabric of American culture, to embed it into the hearts and minds of the American public. The intent was to get people to talk about the car in everyday conversations; as BMW management explained, the objective was to "Leverage the buzz". Also, they wanted to be multi media, giving input to the market from several angles.
The dispersion of the audience group among the demographic layers made it difficult to target through TV and fare advertisement and subsequent market research had shown non traditional media to be more efficient in targeting the psychographic segmentation that BMW had identified. Product placement in movies was a popular non traditional strategy and had been very successful for companies such as Rayban in the past. This type of marketing was beneficial to both movie producers and product marketers. The movie producer got authenticity, realism and character development from using recognizable merchandise in the film and received some form of financial benefit; either a cash payment, free merchandise or both. The product benefited from being exposed to a wider audience than would be possible through traditional media at similar expense. As a result BMW signed an agreement with MGM for the Z3 to be placed in the new Bond film, Goldeneye. The audience for Goldeneye would include foreign and younger viewers, and would also connect BMW with exactly the stylish, sophisticated image that in wanted through its connection to the adventurous, cool 007 character in the film. The downside for BMW was the unpredictability of the movie product placement due to the lack of influence that the marketers had in the final portrayal of their product and the amount of exposure the product received in the film.