Introduction

“Marketing communication is an ever changing field. New theories, new techniques, cultural changes and technological advances all combine to create a dynamic environment within which marketers try to ensure that their messages get through to their target audiences” (Blythe, 2006, p.2). Fill (2005) argues that marketing communications is the way in which organisations reach their target audiences or it is an “audience-centred activity” (Fill, 2005, p.9).
This report aims to analyse the current marketing communication activities for one of the most recognised brands in the UK and the world, MINI Cooper. The first part includes some background information and after that the report follows the planning framework provided by
The major objectives of the strategy will be examined in the next section of this report.

2.2.2 Brand analysis

MINI is an isolated style brand (Grey and Smeltzer, 1985), although it is a part of the BMW family, but within MINI a balanced style (Grey and Smeltzer, 1985) is adopted and all the MINI models carry the corporate name: MINI One, MINI Cooper, MINI Cooper S and MINI Clubman.
MINI’s brand personality is proclaimed to be “energetic, cheeky, stylish, self-confident, reliable and exciting” and its stripe line is “It's a MINI adventure” (Mini Education http://www.mini.co.uk/html/about_us/mini_education/marketing.html), which actually highlight the brand’s extrinsic attributes (Fill, 2005). Kapferer (2004) brand identity prism is adapted to MINI Cooper and presented in Appendix 3.

2.2.3 Competitors

As Simms and Trott (2006) argue “very few brands in this industry are comparable to the MINI, the Volkswagen Beetle, Citroen 2CV and Fiat 500 are among these few and could be compared in terms of their iconic status”. However, indirect competitors could be all the small cars, regardless their brand, especially those that try to copy the MINI’s image such as Suzuki Swift, Nissan Micra, Ford Ka, Mitsubishi Cold etc.

2.3 The internal