BMW Retains Ultimate Slogan

On Monday we posted about an AdvertisingAge story that reported BMW would replace its “The Ultimate Driving Machine” slogan with “A Company of Ideas.” We were astonished that BMW would give up one of the best automotive lines of all time. And so was BMW. It seems the story in AdvertisingAge — the bible for the advertising industry — was just plain wrong. 

“BMW has no intention of dropping, altering or in any way moving away from that great line,” says Eric Webber, a spokesman for ad agency GSD&M, the company responsible for BMW's new “A Company of Ideas” campaign.

In fact, when you look at the “Company of Ideas” print ads, the “The Ultimate Driving Machine” slogan is clearly present. Webber says the new campaign is a positioning statement for the company and not meant as a slogan replacement for “The Ultimate Driving Machine.” 

Well, thank goodness. Unfortunately, our knowledge of similar flubs at other automakers in the past had us believing the erroneous AdAge story, as did many other media outlets. Hopefully we’ve cleared it up.

Comments

haha. people in the boards just went furious and freaked out.

E.
Yeah I saw the thread over on E90. Good stuff. Glad you guys are all off that ledge.
And tell the guys to send all hate mail to AdAge.

This is Laura Ries, daughter and partner of Al Ries. Al is a marketing consultant and father of positioning. He writes a monthly opinion column for Advertising Age. There is a lot of confusion over this story. Let me help to clear it up.

Here is the quote we saw July 10, 2006 in Automotive News: "BMW's longtime tag line - the 'Ultimate Driving Machine' - is not driving sales to a lot of potential buyers. So BMW's new 'Company of Ideas' ad theme touts corporate independence, safety, fuel economy and all the features that the brand isn't used to selling, says Howard Mosher, executive vice president of operations at BMW of North America LLC."

BMW says it isn't changing its long-time advertising slogan, "The ultimate driving machine." But the issue isn't really what the slogan or theme or strategy or positioning is all about; the issue is what the advertising should be talking about. And it isn't "corporate independence, safety, fuel economy." BMW has no credentials in those areas. BMW should be talking about the "fun of driving," the concept that made the brand successful in the first place.

Having an advertising campaign says one thing (Company of ideas) and a tagline say another (The ultimate driving machine) is inconsistent and does not make for good marketing strategy. The most a brand can hope to do is get one idea in the mind.

I think BMW saw the controversy as a sign that oops, perhaps we should not distance ourselves from driving. The concept that built the brand. Initially if you read the Automotive News article you would think they are moving away from driving.

Al has recently corrected his article to more accurately reflect BMW's position and our position regarding the new strategy, tagline etc.

You can read it here

http://www.ries.com/Articles/index.cfm?page=AdAge

As well as www.AdAge.com.

- Laura Ries

Laura,
Thanks for the link. As you can tell by adding that graph: "BMW says it isn’t changing its long-time advertising slogan, “The ultimate driving machine.” But the issue isn’t really what the slogan or theme or strategy or positioning is all about, the issue is what the advertising should be talking about. And it isn’t “corporate independence, safety, fuel economy.” BMW has no credentials in those areas. BMW should be talking about the “fun of driving,” the concept that made the brand successful in the first place."

Makes a world of difference to the entire piece. And I think your father kind of wraps up the fact that BMW already owns the "Driving" crowd, word or whatever, so a new campaign to highlight other attributes doesn't sound so absurb. And that goes against his point.

That said the company of ideas ads bore the crap out of me. While the commercial with the jogger and bmw driver coming home at the same time is hilarious and brings home the point of owning a BMW. I'd also predict this new campaign is more to build on the new X5 and not the new 3 series coupe. The X5 is an SUV for one and features more gizmos than we've seen before. Perhaps the company of ideas line will make more sense for that model.

“The ultimate driving machine.” is a classic BMW would be dumb to change it.

hi!

your car is so beautiful