David Ogilvy, the founder of Ogilvy & Mather once said, “It is the general personality of a brand that finally locks the market position of this brand, not the subtle differences between products.” How to build the special brand personality? In the evening of Nov. 15, 2011, Tsinghua MBA Brand and Sales Club invited the vice president of Vancl Mr. Wu Sheng and the brand management director of BMW Mini Mr. Zhu Jiang to “Brand and Sales Lectures”. They brought a splendid banquet of brand personality building which helped us deeply understand the strategies and tactics related. Ms. Mao Donghui, the deputy director of Tsinghua MBA program also attended the lecture at invitation. 

At the start of the lecture, Ms Mao granted the letters of consultant appointment to these two distinguished guests. Mr. Wu Sheng and Mr. Zhu Jiang officially became consultants of the Club. 

Ms. Mao Granting Letters of Appointment on Behalf of Club to Mr. Wu Sheng and Mr. Zhu Jiang

Mr. Wu Sheng shared his personal practices and thinking regarding brand building passionately. Combined with the rapid development of internet sales, he summarized the 4 theories of brand building: tangible resources equaling intangible resources, intangible resources equaling service, consumption equaling entertainment and advertisement equaling contents. Introducing the practices Vancl adopted in brand building, Mr. Wu made a thorough explanation about how to operate in the elite-to-public way and how to make advertisements echo with consumers. At the same time, he offered 3 suggestions for practical operation in internet sales: adjacence, understanding and respect, which helped the audience perfectly understand the focus in brand building.  

How to maximize the sales effects with relatively low expenses of advertisement? Mr. Zhu Jiang displayed the brand building process of BMW Mini in China. At the beginning of the lecture, Mr. Zhu introduced his English name Izzy by introducing the famous pop singer of rock band “Gun & Rose” who shared the same English name, professionally completed marketing of himself. With splendid PPT, Mr. Zhu said the strategy of Mini was to build the brand personality with utmost efforts. All the advertisement of BMW Mini maintained the same style, made continuous deliberations targeting the same appeal and attracted the public attention with controversial advertisement wording. After 3 years, the brand of BMW Mini was established with brilliance on Chinese market. 

Mr. Zhu Jiang Displaying Brand Building Process of BMW Mini in China

The excellent speech made the time passing undetectable and it approached the end in the questions posed by the audience. This activity made MBA students understand the building process of some consumption brands targeting youngsters and how the famous brands behind enormous business profit classified their markets in detail, built brand personalities in a different way and guided the demand of consumers.