Retro chic takes the kids to school?

“Mini has lost its cool” ran the blog headline, and I was hooked. This was at the #socialvoices blog on MSN. The reason I was hooked is that I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing myself for some time now but, as is the way, had never mentioned it to anyone in case I was the only one thinking it. But the blogger at #socialvoices came to the same conclusion. The BMW Mini was a brilliant marketing conception combined with high quality design and engineering. Chic retro is probably always in fashion, and certainly has been a great success story in the last decade. The BMW Mini was chic retro writ large, and a fantastic success story, but by 2012 it began to look as though a good idea had been pushed beyond its reasonably limits.

The issue here is line extension and brand extension, both of which are discussed in Marketing: An Introduction on pages 245-246. The original BMW Mini was extended to a clubman estate, which was still recognisably, essentially, the same car. The problem has arisen with more recent variants sharing the Mini name. The prime example: the Mini Countryman SUV, which at over four metres long is mini in name only. Is this a line extension or a brand extension? MAI tells us that a line extension is where new products are added within the same product category under the same brand name, while a brand extension is the use of a successful brand name to launch new or modified products in a new category.

Is the Mini Countryman SUV in the same product category as the Mini One (line extension), or is it in a different product category (brand extension)? Well, let’s leave that for our students to ponder over. The key point here is that MAI mentions a number of drawbacks to line and brand extensions: an overextended brand might lose its specific meaning, heavily extended brands can cause consumer confusion, and the damage might even affect the integrity of the underlying brand. Not very likely, one would think, when we are dealing with a sub-brand of the mighty BMW, and a sub-brand—Mini—that has carried all before it in recent years. On top of that, surely, putting two cool things together, the Mini brand and the SUV product category, has to work, doesn’t it?

Clearly I have my doubts, as does the #socialvoices blogger. The original BMW Mini was cool, retro chic which shouted “youthful fun” at you. The Mini Countryman SUV is designed to take the kids to school. Something isn’t quite right. The brand is being pulled a little too far. And, on my side, count Dan Neil of the Wall Street Journal Online, who calls the Mini Countryman “ridiculous … absurd … (resembling) an orthotic shoe” (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704615504576172832123217962.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_editorsPicks_2#articleTabs%3Darticle).

They’ll sell some cars. Will they damage the brand?