BMW targets Facebook generation

Traditional media buyers beware! The new BMW one-series 135i coupe, capable of 255kph (155mph) but driven by me at little more than 100kph in pelting rain around Sweden's biggest island and the Gotland Ring race circuit, is being launched with an entirely new advertising and marketing campaign.

"We have to see which channel creates the most value," says Jörg Reimann, head of marketing innovation. "We are re-evaluating our agencies to see if they have the right background and expertise and are deliberately challenging them. It's a process we initiated: strong brands like BMW have to push on their own," says the tall, young manager in the hand-tailored suit and personalised shirt.

The old-style campaign split between old (TV, print, radio) and new media of 60:40 will more than likely be stood on its head as the coupe, retailing at between £21,500 and £30,000, is squarely aimed at the "young, dynamic, intense" (like base jumping off wind turbines, says Jörg) group of 29- to 40-year-olds. The auto industry is the most blogged and, within it, BMW the most blogged brand.

The target group compares with an average age for BMW-buyers of 48 so the campaign will target websites like YouTube, MySpace and Facebook. But Jörg adds that 53% of YouTube users are over-35s and a quarter of the over-50s get their info about cars from blogs. So it's not just the brand-fixated but brand-fickle high earners among the 30-somethings he's going for: 92% of new car-buyers research online and 80% use a search engine such as Google or Yahoo!

So, BMW, which has developed interactive audio and video spots, is also aiming at vlogs, mashups, wikis and podcasts. "We're expecting lots of eyeballs," says Jörg of his "even more aggressive" campaign. "It's the first time we are integrating a lot more initiatives into one project launch ...We need another scale-set and mentality."

Michael Ganal, ex-sales & marketing director now finance chief, says BMW hopes to sell around 25,000 one-series coupes a year - half of them in the US ,where its age-profile is lower and going down, the Fed's cuts in interest rates are preventing the economy from collapsing and buoying demand and BMW is increasing capacity at its South Carolina plant at Spartanburg from 160,000 to 240,000 to offset the booming euro. But the car will be assembled at the Zaha Hadid-designed plant in Leipzig, the last new European car factory ever to be built.

Getting MiFID-compliant

Meanwhile, back in Brussels, the absent (school hols) Charlie McCreevy, internal market commissioner, has launched into being the - wait for it - markets in financial instruments directive (MiFID), the EU's (typically cumbersomely titled) answer to London's Big Bang 20 years ago.

Billed as the greatest change in the European securities markets in two decades, MiFID, according to Charlie, will "transform the landscape" and bring "much-needed competition and efficiency" by allowing banks, investment firms, brokerages and others - armed with a pan-European single passport - to compete across borders for trades in securities. Bourses in, say, Italy and Spain will lose their monopoly.

David Wright, Charlie's top official, said this week: "There's a new balance in the market - more competition in return for better investor protection." Customers, divided into three layers of sophistication, will be supposedly guaranteed not only greater choice but "best execution" or the best possible price for the most "suitable" product. That would be true if, say, you bought shares in Finmeccanica in Frankfurt or London rather than in Milan.

The benefits of the legislation may be in dispute but Wright says prices will come down - with estimates of up to 25% - and trading volumes will go up as the exorbitant costs of clearing and settlement tumble. Conservative estimates suggest that the cost of capital will fall 0.5%, GDP will jump 1.1%and business investment will grow 6%.

There are, as with all EU directives affecting 27 countries, snags and delays. Only two-thirds of member states have introduced MiFID into national law and, of the eight recalcitrants, including Holland, four are way behind - Hungary, the Czech Republic, Spain and Poland. Firms there will be at a serious disadvantage, handing an even greater boost to, above all, London but also Frankfurt and Paris.

Atos Origin, the IT services company, has found that many EU financial firms are not ready to compete in the new market while research by the JWG-IT thinktank shows 64% cannot meet requirements to be able to prove that they offered what they said they would and keep records showing so for five years.

Atos says firms spent up to a quarter less than they intended initially - and have seen MiFID purely as a compliance exercice rather than the opportunity seized by start-ups such as Chi-X which has taken market share from, say, the LSE and Deutsche Börse. Would-be rivals to the traditional exchanges such as Project Turquoise, the trading platform formed by nine investment banks more commonly known as Project Tortoise, are up to a year behind schedule - though it has just appointed a new CEO.

Finally, it's yet to be proven if and when firms will recoup the technology and other costs they've made to be MiFID-compliant and -ready. In Britain the FSA, which has put the one-off cost at up to £1.2bn, says it could cost the financial services industry an extra £100m a year - but bring annual benefits of £200m. Given all this, it's hardly surprising that the centre for European Policy Studies has said that, unlike Big Bang, MiFID will not happen overnight. "Such are the the levels of disarray among firms and supervisors, it seems that the regulation will properly come into being only after a long and tortuous process of legal trial and error."

Well, this is Brussels, stupid.

Digital dividend

If it ain't broke, why fix it. Brussels, according to a thundering neo-con editorial in the Wall Street Journal last week after Microsoft's surrender to EU price-fixing, is the new global epicentre of regulatory imperialism. In two weeks' time, if the current runes prove correct, Viviane Reding, media and IT commissioner, will propose a pan-European super-regulator or enforcement agency to police the telecoms sector under a new framework directive.

Ed Richards, chief executive of Ofcom, the UK regulator that forced BT to "unbundle" its wholesale (network) business Openreach and thereby helped promote its recent share surge, is deeply unhappy with her plan (which, in energy, has been abandoned because the 27 countries won't wear it). He thinks a 110-strong body would be divorced from the reality of national markets, be a bureaucratic monster unfree from political interference and, absurdly, could mean the commission advising itself.

But, in a Brussels speech this week, he set out the alternative option of fixing the current regulatory system by strengthening the structure and powers of the European Regulators' Group (ERG) as the EU addresses issues such as spectrum liberalisation, access to 4G multimedia telephony or quadruple play and VOIP. The status quo, he said, does not pass muster.

In his vision national regulators would be given greater and more consistent independence from government, politicians and companies and would co-ordinate their scrutiny and enforcement activities much more closely. The ERG, he proposed, would be given a 25-strong secretariat by 2011, a bigger budget, a strong management board using majority voting on key issues and a full-time CEO.

It would, he said, help Reding and her troops produce revised "remedies" such as the option of unbundling or promoting effective consumer protection - without adopting "one-size-fits-all" policies or stifling national regulators' innovation. The net effect, industry sources say, would be multimillion or even multibillion savings for consumers - the priority for the Barroso commission. Over to you, Viv.

And she's made plain she'll go ahead, dismissing the ERG via her spokesman as a "do-nothing" "cozy club" of fine-wine drinkers that's failed to address, let alone answer, a single important issue.