Background

As the luxury auto market in China becomes more saturated, Leo Burnett needed to cut through the clutter and think of something new for BMW that had not been done before. The creative agency did this by focusing on the emotional aspects of car ownership, which set a new scene for advertising across the industry in China. Appealing to human emotions on a level that had never been done in that country before, the campaign not only won awards, but also made BMW and the emotional concept of joyfulness synonymous.

Aim

With the roll-out of the brand’s ‘Joy of BMW’ campaign around the world, Leo Burnett Beijing had to localise the concept for a mainland Chinese audience. The campaign was to be launched close to the Beijing Auto show and would be the first wave for the global brand campaign. It would also be the first to use the brand’s new human positioning, which covered several levels of emotions including the pleasures and joy of driving, the joy of realising a dream (car ownership), and the joy of responsibility and sharing (positive environmental impacts). The message was a marked departure from their previous positioning, and would set a benchmark for what was to follow in the mainland’s competitive automotive market.

Execution

The first communication for the campaign ‘The story of joy’ aimed to incorporate a human element to the brand. The art direction and layout of this campaign was to be unique from any communication that had or did exist in the auto industry. It was to be a radical departure from the feature-driven, shiny, chrome-heavy commercials that populated the segment, where there was little, if any communication about the technical merits of the vehicles. The emotional aspects of car ownership were to be emphasised, reflecting the status of car ownership in China.
The out-of-home and print campaign ran in nationally distributed magazines in three niches — automotive, lifestyle and luxury — as well as in regional newspapers in May and June last year. Among the creative was a series of three print ads called ‘human’, ‘car’ and ‘society’. BMW’s advertising connected to its audience through its talk about human expressions of joy through opera, flowers and the arts, something not commonly seen in auto adverts in China.

Results

For the first time in a long time — if not for the first time in the brand’s history — BMW was communicating its core brand value through a human lens. The trio of executions won several commen-dations including a gold award at the China Automobile Advertising Awards in January. Aside from the above-the-line campaign, thekey visuals were adapted for use across a number of touchpoints, including websites, dealer showrooms and events. As a result, BMW’s brand tracking pre- and post-campaign showed a statistically significant improvement in attributes related to joy. Across China, BMW’s sales grew 87 per cent last year.