You may remember the MINI Takes the States Tour 2010 that AllSmallCars.com reported on over the summer. Basically, it is a part of the core that is MINI lifestyle marketing and consisted of a road rally that started in many of the major U.S. markets and terminated in Denver, Colo. The event was great to attend and they even had an exchange of vowels during the owners’ garage party. The credit for these successful events tends to go to the marketing organization responsible and in this case Trudy Hardy, MINI marketing manager, and her team, oversaw it.

With success sometimes comes change; at the end of last week Automotive News reported that MINI was “shuffling” their marketing department. According to their report, Tom Salkowsky, currently manager of corporate communications for BMW, will move over to the MINI brand and take over the role of MINI marketing manager from Trudy Hardy. Then Hardy will move over and become BMW marketing communications manager replacing Patrick McKenna. Yep, you guessed it, McKenna will move on to take the lead as MINI’s product strategy and motor experiences department.

We caught up with Hardy at the MINI Takes the States 2010 event, as we mentioned earlier, where she had a lot of positive things to say about why MINI chose to put on such a big event even in these rough economic times. The up shot—they want their customers to know how much they appreciate them. We wish Hardy the best in her new role which is reported to include responsibility for BMW’s national, event and direct marketing. Maybe we will see more grassroots and community style marketing come out of BMW with hardy at the helm.

 

 

[Source: Automotive News]