Browsing: BMW
A new global campaign shot by Flying Fish to promote the new BMW 1 series features some of the City of Sails’ most iconic sights.
After a relatively quiet patch on the pitching front, things are heating up with BMW and Westpac both reviewing parts of their business.
Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.
DDB and BMW’s April Fools Day switcheroo made one woman very happy. And it’s also impressed the judges of the April Newspaper Ad of the Month award.
Every year, brands tend to jump on special occasions with the enthusiasm of a cat attacking a red dot on a kitchen floor. And without fail this sees consumers inundated with promotional material related to Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day and pretty much any other day that has even slight significance to someone. So, in what has come to be an annual tradition, here’s a rundown of how various brands—including Google, Campbell Live, GrabOne and BMW—attempted to trick gullible consumers this year.
While Google messes about with a self-driving car, BMW is bringing the digital world to the driver in its newly released Connected Drive system. Already available in many parts of the globe, the onboard internet and SOS service comes standard with all new beemers in New Zealand, with optional subscriber services such as a 24/7 concierge phone service and a series of apps for integrating the car with your phone and home computer. But, um, why? Many of the features, such as GPS navigation, phone, internet and digital radio are available on all smart phones. So are AA, tow trucks and ambulances. So why not just bluetooth your brick and flick on the hands free?
“The average human goes from 0 to 60 in less than two billion seconds,” says the narrator in the new BMW spot via Ogilvy’s Gurgaon branch in India. And during the 44 seconds of the ad, this premise is visually represented through a series of photographs and short video clips showing the progression of a person moving from youth to old age in only a few seconds, and tying in perfectly to the ‘Don’t postpone joy’ positioning of the new campaign.
BMW Canada created a bit of online conjecture recently over a recent spot showing its new M4 skidding around a racetrack located on top of an aircraft carrier. Not surprisingly, given the distinct lack of racetrack-enabled aircraft carriers in the world, it was accused of being fake. But no-one seems to care whether it is or not, because it’s been viewed nearly five million times online. And now New Zealanders are getting a taste of it for the local launch.
After choosing DDB to take over from FCB as its creative agency late last year, BMW has completed its line-up, with Rapp taking over from Twenty as its CRM agency and Dynamo, which had been working with the company on a short-term contract, being appointed as the media partner.
Since the 1980s, BMW has been using the April Fools tradition as a canvas to showcase a series of imaginative, and somewhat insane, faux products in the hope of catching out gullible or unsuspecting consumers. And this year, DDB NZ decided to continue the frivolity by launching the BMW ZZZ Series cot, an egg-capsule contraption that simulates the noises and G-force of a road journey to encourage the little one lying inside to fall asleep.
The corporate wheel continues to turn this week at Foodstuffs, Tourism NZ, BMW, Pursuit PR, LiveSport, Ubiquity, Image Centre and the Vodafone Warriors.
In November, when Volkswagen and George Weston Foods departed DDB for Colenso BBDO, it seemed as though the Auckland-based agency was headed for a subdued Christmas party. But only a matter of weeks later, DDB managed to pull a pair of rabbits out of its hat by adding BMW and Speight’s to the ledger. These two wins capped off an award-filled year, which saw the agency’s planning director, Lucinda Sherborne, walk away with the Austrailia/New Zealand Planner of the Year Award at the Campaign Asia Agency of the Year Awards. And now it’s over to her for some insights on a year of contrasts for the agency.
It hasn’t been the best of years for DDB. But after parting company with longtime client VW recently, it didn’t have to wait long to find a replacement and it will be starting next year on a good note with a different German car-maker—BMW—on its roster.
2degrees’ entertaining duplication and BMW’s New Zealand excursion bring joy to the hearts of all this week.
BMW’s promotion of the new X5 is a case study in why there’s no substitute for local — and for getting hands on in our country air, complete with a whiff of dung.
Not long after one German car company chose its favoured agency, another German car company is following suit, with DDB, Special Group and DraftFCB getting set to duke it out for the BMW and Mini business.
The news that Volkswagen was reviewing its relationship with DDB was a surprise to many given the brand’s performance in recent years, and BMW, which managed to reclaim the top spot in the premium stakes from Audi with DraftFCB in the passenger seat, is following suit.
Last year, after six years in second place, BMW knocked Audi off its perch and reclaimed the top selling premium car mantle in the New Zealand market. But Audi isn’t far behind, it’s still growing and it’s decided to tap into the nation’s patriotic fervour with one of the German brand’s first locally shot campaigns.
In the battle of the premium cars, New Zealand is something of an anomaly, because unlike most markets around the world Audi has been top of the pile for the past six years. But by rethinking its marketing tactics, tailoring its products and comms to suit the New Zealand market, standing up to HQ and targeting new customers, BMW managed to reclaim the throne last year.
Ze Germans have created an extremely valuable country brand based around reliability, precision and quality design and engineering, which has certainly helped the likes of VW, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz conquer the world’s roads. But Sweden is trying to find its niche, and in New Zealand it’s doing it with a ballsy new campaign for the new Volvo V40 hatchback that takes aim at the established German car brands and taps into the desire to be ‘Über Different’.
A few weeks back I ventured to Turners Auctions with a friend who was on the hunt for a new steed. If a car caught our eye, we’d kick the tyres, push a few buttons inside, lift the bonnet, check the oil, and stand back and say ‘yep, she looks pretty good’. The engine could have been inserted upside down and we probably still would’ve said that, so, given this complete lack of mechanical knowledge, it was perhaps slightly ironic that a few days later I was invited to venture to Central Otago to take some beefy new BMWs for a few frosty donuts in the snow. But, as a freeloading journalist with a rich boganic Invercargill heritage, it was an offer too good to refuse.
It began as a cool marketing move by BMW: paying a paltry sum to have the name of its Mini Cooper Roadster associated with the cold snap engulfing Europe. But the car firm will rueing its decision now, after the freezing weather killed more than 130 people and sent over 500 to hospital.
While all the talk in broadcasting land is about Sky and TVNZ’s Igloo, TVNZ has just announced the arrival of a new addition to its OnDemand family called Ad Hover, “a dynamic, customisable and fully interactive advertising opportunity” created in conjunction with DraftFCB that aims to give viewers a more engaging and immersive video experience and claims to significantly up the brand recall measures for advertisers.
BMW’s Summer Sale 2011 campaign by DraftFCB has been awarded top spot in Yahoo! NZ’s first quarterly Digital Strategy Award.