[awesomeness] is understanding who you are November 8th, 2009
one brand, two very different routes.
BMW used to be The Ultimate Driving Machine. Then someone decided that was not good enough. So BMW have decided to be all about Sheer Driving Pleasure.
A bit of a mistake, perhaps.
BMW has always had a distinctive edge because of the idea of ‘the ultimate driving machine’. The cars, feats of engineering, have always had a stance exuding presence to the point of arrogance.
That has been an underlying narrative in past initiatives like The Hire series of films (one linked below here), or any of the other commercials like the M5-ThrustIISEC ad or the Balance ads for the 5 Series.
The creative translation of Sheer Driving Pleasure is ‘Jump for joy’. Nice idea, if you are Volkswagen or Mini or Smart; but brand suicide if you’re BMW.
BMWs have always been the car with a point. They’re performance machines. They’re fast. They growl. They push you to be more. If you look up brandtags, you will find the most prominent tag for BMW happens to be a**hole. For a very good reason.
Past communications understood and built on this, but ‘Jump for joy’ is almost an apology and a promise of rehabilitation to quieter pastures for the brand. I’m curious to know where the brand will go next – I hope it’s someplace closer to The Ultimate Driving Machine again. We know that BMW’s had to do a bit of defending against Audi, but this campaign cedes ground that it took BMW many years to make its very own.
Change is good when it makes sense, but I don’t know if Marketing @ BMW did a reality check before they decided to proceed with this exercise. It’s like Churchill deciding to deliver his “we shall fight them to the beaches” in limerick. Schade, as they might say in Germany.
As a side note, Mercedes put out a new ad for its updated E-Class, a little more hard-edged that you would expect from the three-point-star.
Watch this space, it’s going to get interesting in 2010.
Tags: advertising, awesomeness, BMW, brands, identity, jump for joy, marketing, narratives, planning, strategy, the ultimate driving machine
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