Advertising | Are BMW changing their slogan?
“Clarification: As per to BMW’s ad agency’s advice the news about BMW changing their slogan is not true and were based on an incorrect conclusion by a journalist”
“The Ultimate Driving Machine” has been BMW’s primary ad slogan for 31 years, this slogan which was launched through an advertising campaign back in year 1975 by BMW’s agency Ammirati Puris AvRutick, helped the German manufacture to jump from the eleventh largest-selling European vehicle in America in year 1974 with 15,007 unit sold to the largest-selling European vehicle in USA last year with 266,200 unit.
BMW of North America has a new executive vice president of operations at and a new advertising agency, the brand is about ready to launch a new advertising slogan - “A Company of Ideas”. One of the reasons given by BMW’s new executive VP for changing BMW’s slogan is the fact that a recent research study revealed that only 25 percent of its target market would consider buying a BMW.
Its vital for any brand to own a word in the mind of its consumers and its not easy to change it, its almost impossible specially when we are talking about this long time, most of the top selling brands in the vehicles industry in USA owns a word, BMW owns “driving.” Mercedes-Benz owns “prestige.” Volvo owns “safety.”
This entry was posted on Monday, August 7th, 2006 at 11:19 pm and is filed under Ads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on August 9, 2006 at 3:26 pm Eric Webber wrote:
In the August 7 edition of Advertising Age, columnist Al Ries claimed that in an upcoming advertising campaign, BMW would be dropping its legendary slogan “The Ultimate Driving Machine.” Ries was significantly off-base. First of all, BMW has no intention of dropping, altering or in any way moving away from that great line. In the development of the latest ad campaign, the first from BMW’s new advertising agency GSD&M, the issue wasn’t even discussed. Ries took some bad information and then compounded the problem by making poor assumptions based on comments that he did not even try to verify.
The “upcoming” campaign to which Ries referred actually began running more than three months ago, on May 5, in print, TV and online. “The Ultimate Driving Machine” slogan is prominently featured in all of the ads. There was also quite a bit written about the campaign launch in print and online. It appears that Ries was confused by a mention of the overarching theme of the campaign, “A Company of Ideas.” That’s not a slogan, and those actual words don’t appear in the ads in any way that would be confused as a replacement for “The Ultimate Driving Machine.” In the marketing business, it’s known as a positioning statement.” It represents a way of talking about the company, as opposed to a specific slogan that identifies the brand.
BMW is a remarkably innovative company. Their corporate culture, specifically their independence and encouragement of creative thinking and problem solving is what allows them to produce the ultimate driving machine. They are very much a company of ideas and they have the chops to prove it. The ad campaign so misinterpreted by Ad Age gives consumers a look at some of the ways BMW backs up that claim. The two things, a positioning and a slogan are very important but also very different things. The former is a broad theme, the latter a very specific word or phrase. Separate but complimentary. It’s a distinction that any marketing student knows. Al Ries and Ad Age certainly should have too.
To get a better look, check out the “Uniquely BMW” section of http://www.bmwusa.com.
Eric Webber
Communications Director
GSD&M
on August 10, 2006 at 6:37 am Samer Marzouq wrote:
Thanks a lot Eric for the clarification, I really appreciate it and I have already cleared it at the beginning of the post.