Case Study : BMW Films
What is even more remarkable is that BMW launched and successfully executed this campaign inspite of the fact that there wasn't a mass market content streaming platform such as YouTube back then. After the series began, BMW saw their 2001 sales numbers go up 12% from the previous year. The films proved to be so popular that BMW ended up producing a free DVD for customers who visited certain BMW dealerships. This small marketing move significantly improve dealer traffic. How Did They Do It?BMW films was one of the early viral marketing attempts on the internet. These films were not some marketing videos produced by BMW marketing. They were passive in terms of brand advertising. For example, you can replace the BMW car in the film by another brand but core story in the film still made sense. These films made a strong emotional connection with the viewers regardless of their affinity to BMW brand. Also, these films very cleverly have a central character called The Driver who "helped people through difficult circumstances using deft driving skills-in a prominent." The whole idea was to project the "Ultimate Driving Machine" image to support the release of new vehicles. While this viral marketing effort was unproven and untested at the time of conception, there were few things BMW knew about its customers that spurred them to create this campaign. For example, BMW discovered that approximately 85% of their customers researched the vehicles on the internet before purchasing them. According to an article by Tom Hespos, the films were the basis for an extremely successful viral campaign, almost all of the people who downloaded the movies recommended them to other people. The BMW Films project was one of those moments when an advertising campaign is so powerful that it didn't need an established platform to work with. BMW successfully promoted its brand and the particular Z4 product that was at the heart of the promotion. People took the underlying message to heart and walked away with a very positive deep brand experience. Need help with your Brand? Call us toll free at (800) 379-6214. |
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Brand architecture is how different products and services identify themselves relative to the organization. It provides strategic direction for customer interaction.
A brand proposition is a promise that your business must keep. It is lot easier to build brand value by fulfilling the promises that your business makes.
In 2002, BMW produced a series of eight short films (averaging about ten minutes each) exclusively for internet users. This web-only short film series "The Hire", starring Clive Owens was a unique marketing experiment by BMW. All eight films featured popular filmmakers from across the globe, and highlighted the performance aspects of various BMW automobiles. More than 11 million viewers tuned in to watch these web only short films and over 2 million registered on BMW website and large majority of users, registered to the site, sent film links to their friends and family. In next four years, it is estimated that these videos were viewed over 100 million times!