Rolls-Royce works hard for its elite clientele
Premium car companies often like to talk about making every customer count. When Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Ltd. does so, it is difficult to doubt its sincerity.
The British super-luxury brand, owned by Germany's BMW, sells barely 800 cars a year. Retail prices for the company's Phantom cars start at $400,000, and models with many customized features can cost millions, making every sale made or forgone an event for the carmaker.
But Rolls-Royce's rarefied prices pose special marketing challenges. The company's target customers are people with liquid assets of at least $30 million, a group that automotive consultant Capgemini estimates at 85,000 worldwide.
"Conventional car companies tend to push cars down a pipeline and expect people to buy them," said Ian Robertson, Rolls-Royce's chairman and chief executive. "We are dealing in a very small niche right at the pinnacle."
Rolls-Royce, which does not report financial results independently of its German parent group, also does not disclose the size of its marketing budget, which Robertson described as "very small." However, the company recently spoke to the Financial Times about techniques for marketing to the super-rich.
If conventional marketing could be compared to a shotgun approach, one company executive said, Rolls-Royce's was more like a sniper rifle. "It's really about being intelligent about how we network," he said.
Although the brand does a limited amount of print advertising, people with enough money to buy a Rolls are difficult to address, Robertson said, and do not respond to conventional advertisements. They also tend to have lots of people around to protect them from unwanted sales pitches.
"For these people, drinks of vintage champagne are nothing special," he said. "You have to capture their imagination by offering them something they can't otherwise get."
The marque's main point of contact with existing and potential customers is through its 79 independently owned dealerships worldwide. It chooses dealers who "live in the same world, drive the same cars, have the same yachts and aircraft" as its customers, Robertson said.
The dealership in Berkeley Square in London's Mayfair, owned by luxury chain H.R. Owen, organizes "wonderful lunches" and dinners for "like-minded people" at hotels such as the Dorchester, said Rodney Turner, director of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars London.
