ADS OF THE DAY: BMW
Back in the 70s and 80s car ads were all about sexy storytelling.
All story, no product, no information.
TV ads usually showed a stereotypical gorgeous model-level couple sat in a shiny new motor cruising through a sunlit forest road or winding country lane.
No other cars for miles around.
BMW’s agency, Wight Collins Rutherford Scott (WCRS) tried this approach and it just didn’t work.
Agency founder and creative director, Robin Wight wanted to do something different.
"Rather than try to whip up a motivational soufflé, we decided to search for the little pieces of grit from which the pearls of a great brand could be created.”
He pitched a new strategy to the then head of BMW. He was going to interrogate the product until it confessed to its strengths. The classic side-by-side product demo was born and became the long-term advertising strategy for BMW.
One of the best examples of this approach was their ‘Shaken not stirred’ ad which was created in 1984.
SHAKEN NOT STIRRED
How the concept came about has passed into advertising folklore.
Robin Wight was over at BMW in Munich interrogating German engineers as to why 6-cylinder 2 litre engines were better than 4-cylinder 2 litre engines.
The German engineer went into great detail about the finer points of harmonic balance.
As Wight recalled, “I told him that I couldn’t bind him into the Sunday Times magazine so he could lecture to the British audience.”
“So suddenly in a flash of inspiration he picked up a glass of water that was on the table. He said, ‘I would take this glass of water and put it on the engine block of a 4-cylinder 2 litre engine – as in a Mercedes.’
‘The imperfections of balance in the engine would mean that though the glass wouldn’t move, the water inside it would bounce up and down.’
‘By contrast, if you put the same glass on a BMW 6-cylinder 2 litre BMW engine, neither the glass or the water would move because it is perfectly balanced.’
Wight thought, nah, this sounds too good to be true.
PAPER CUP
“When I got back to my office in London I had a Mercedes and a BMW parked outside the door of the agency.”
“I brought down a paper cup full of water and did exactly the test the engineer had described.”
“And exactly what he had described happened – the water bounced up and down on the Mercedes engine and it didn’t move on the BMW engine.”
So I went upstairs with my wonderful art director Cathy Heng and in fifteen minutes we’d done this ad.”
The paper cup was replaced by a vodka Martini and placed on top of a Mercedes 2 litre 4-cylinder engine as well as a BMW six-pot.
A sublime ad was created, and the future strategy of BMW and the many other car makers that copied it was born.
