Comments

While researching the field Volvo came up with a new site for the s40 that has some of the characteristics of the BMW site. This site has got lounge music on it and shows short intro movies of the cars. One can click on safety tests to see how strong a Volvo is and how they always try to keep it as safe as possible. What is interesting about the Television commercial of the new Volvo is that it shows the graphics of the car as in a videogame from the xbox game consult. The pictures are from the game RalliSport Challenge 2. Street Date Spring 2004[iii]. They combine their advertisement with that of the game. This also says that it relies on the graphics of a game to attract potential buyers. This might be a try out from Volvo to see if it can explore a new effective way of advertising.

Audi created a new site during this research on which the german Manfred Sewenig, product managing, tells how they came to designing this car the way it is. This is all told in German. It should not suprise anyone that there is lounge music attached to the site. What is interesting about the advertisement on this site is that the design is told by someone from product managing, something about development is told by someone from Technical Project Management and something about production is told by the director of the Neckarsulm Plant. They show how the car is developed and how it is produced.[iv]

Mercedes starts to learn the consumer how the vision for the new cars is developed on the Vision Grand Sports Tourer site. They tell they wanted a car the world had never seen before. A grand sporty car. A car for all ages. The voice tells in English how sportif the car is.[v]

When looking at other cars, one can visit the ‘at a snap’ section where a movie trailer voice-over tells what the car is about. What kind of motor is inside and what kind of brakes it has[vi]. The site hardly uses any sound and when sound is there, it is......lounge.

Saab is also a creator of expensive cars for the target area where BMW is trying to sell its cars to. Saab has got the worst site of all sites mentioned above. When entering the site, the consumer sees big lists of small letters. The only films that are to be found on this site are the introduction of the state of independence and the TV ads[vii]. Maybe Saab thinks their buyers aren’t people that use the Internet, but that would suprise a lot of us.

According to this information BMW is still ahead of its contestants, but they’re closing in. They all, except for Saab, updated their sites to make sure they look hipper, younger and most of all sportif. It is as if they want to tell that there is no hipper car than theirs. They seem to want people to think that they were wrong when thinking their cars are only for elder and old fashioned baby boomers. The image they, again except for Saab, seem to be creating is one that stands for individuality. Be different.

BMW plays with the thought what is of more importance form or function within their new film who killed the idea. Again a film with big names, like Harvey Keitel and Debi Mazar and german super model Nadja Auermann. The movie tells that everything nowadays is about style and nothing about the idea. Contemporary advertising is more about style then function. The movie is a mixture of a pulp detective movie combined with a investigative documentary. The only thing that misfits in the movie is the extremely new and modern BMW 5 series. On the site of the film, director Herman Vaske tells about the plead for more creativity they are making through this film. He asks why ideas are killed before they are even born and how we can protect ideas. To see what this has to do with BMW is difficult, but possible[viii].

BMW even goes further with exploring the boundaries of advertisement by launching a series of games with the brand BMW attached to it. This series of games consists three funsports. Namely downhill mountainbiking, snowboarding and wild water canoeļng. Of course the brand apears everywhere in this game and you have to drive a BMW X3 to get to the top of the mountain where you will start performing your funsport[ix]. BMW wants to show the people that their X3 is more than just a luxurous car. It can perform under heavy circumstances and is made for sportif people. This game is something new within the advertisement or branding from BMW. With online gaming they can reach a wider public and as a study sponsored by AOL-games, performed by Digital Market services has researched, women play a lot of online games to relax. What advertisers most of the time do not know is that according to a study by Entertainment Software Association, 43% of the gamers are females. This is a big group that is there to be reached. BMW serves the need and has a great chance of reaching this group[x].

It seems the brand is trying hard to stay ahead of the other carbrands and seem to be doing well. Other carbrands will follow with the online gaming advertisement. These brands are all already implemented in the regular gaming industry, where brands are seen in special cargames like Need For Speed 4, in which realistic real existing BMW, Mercedes, Audi and other cars can be chosen[xi].

Bron: http://www.nfscars.net/nfs4shots/b5.jpg

(n.b. the 550i is not an existing BMW. The 5-series is, but ends with the M)

To be abled to answer this question first the term ‘snail mail’ needs to be discussed. Snail mail comes from the the postal service. Once the mail service came on the Internet, the regular postal service was called snail mail. It went to slow. Their expectations of immediate respons were beyond the old mailing methods[xii]. The same thing can be said about other kinds of media. Maybe in a while the normal photocameras will dissapear because the digital camera has taken over. Consumers will think it takes to long to develop the pictures. They have to go to a store and will have to wait for a few hours or days before they can see how their photos look. This became ‘snail mail’ because with the digital camera one can see directly what the picture looks like and can print it at home with a photoprinter, or can mail it to their friends and re-arrange parts of photos.

This ‘snail mail’ can also take place in the world of advertising. When looking at how the advertising strategies are blurring the lines between advertising and entertainment it calls for the question if ‘normal’ oldschool branding will vanish and make room for ‘advertainment’? Will people be bored by normal commercials on the television with anoying people talking about loans and washing powder. A thing that needs to be kept in mind is that on the Internet people will have to look for commercials instead of getting them presented in commercial blocks. One can not pop up clips that last for half a minute. Consumers will not dig it. So probably this old way of advertising, thrue television and newspapers will last. What is happening is a blurring of advertisment. Brands know that for a small amount of money they can give a lot of information thrue the Internet in comperison with expensive advertisements in magazines and even more expensive commercials during prime time television. The only thing they need to do is reach people to go and look at their sites. This is where the old commercials come in. The advertisements in the papers need to trigger consumers to go and watch the information about the brand on the Internet. This again needs to be interesting enough to prevend the consumer from going to a different site. This is where creating compelling experiences, offering some kind of tool or utility and allowing the consumer to indicate what they want to hear about mentioned above in the chapter about why the films on the Internet are shown[xiii].

Regular advertising will not become snailmail, but other techniques serve certain brands better and will reach far more people than regular advertising techniques. The way the advertising is heading is one in which commercials become more and more a copy of entertainment. It is entertainment why people watch television anyway. This is also the reason why they go online or play a game. The message is handed over thrue the dramatic nature.[xiv]

This entertainment can also be implemented in the regular branding. While people now see commercials as an annoying break in their favorite series and get bored by the 30 second informationboost they get, entertainment could make the commercials something worthwhile waiting for. This way commercials could be longer. A person is willing to look at 30 minutes of entertainment, but will not watch 30 seconds of informational commercials[xv].

When taking a look at the future, a clear forecast can be made. Although it is not necessary to become reality, it is verry likely to asume that advertisement will be implemented in regular entertainment. Nowadays we already see films like Tomorrow Never Dies, with advertisements in the film from Heineken, Smirnoff, BMW, Visa and Ericsson, or Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, which had advertising partnerships with Heineken, Visa, Mitsubishi, Virgin Atlantic, Philips Electronics, Starbucks coffee, and the American Academy of Periodontology (‘Don’t forget to floss, baby!’[xvi], it’s clear that advertisement has blurred the barriers between entertainment and advertisement and will be entertainment.

By this combination of advertisement and entertainment the viewer will be prevented from zapping to an other channel. This way important exposure time is made by the brand. This kind of sponsorship is to be seen in the examples of the films above[xvii].

Now the same thing is happening on the Internet where different media are allready combined. It seems this is going to be the new style. No commercials, but ‘ ‘entertisement’. Games are already starting to be more and more advertising virtual worlds, like 1080 on the nintendo 64. This game is filled with Burton snowboards and boardwear. They even sponsor real snowboard events together[xviii].

To make sure all the hard work of making the film was worth it, the people need to be informed about the existence of the films and must know where to find these. The normal ways of doing this is by placing posters in cities and near busses and by making television and radio commercials and advertisements in magazines and newspapers. But another verry effective way of doing this is through viral marketing. In this case viral is not a bad thing, but a way to let advertisement spread itself. An advertisement must be so attractive to consumers, that they will make it a subject of discussion and spread the word. This is called the ‘snowballprincipe’ and is perfect for Internet users. When they find something of their interest, they can mail it to their friends instantly. The term virus is chosen because this goes fast and uncomplicated. Hotmail is a company that became big by viral marketing. Users of Hotmail automatically sent an attached hotmail message to open an account. This helped Hotmail to become one of the largests e-mail servers in the world.

With BMW films this way of viral marketing is done by the fact that a person needs to fill in its e-mail adress before being allowed to watch the movies. Further these persons are willing to tell their friends about the films they saw. This way these friends also will fill in their e-mail adresses and watch the films. This process goes on and on and makes sure thousands or probably millions of people are contacting BMW[xix].

As we have seen many things are happening in the world of advertising and BMW is fully aware of this. The shift from the baby boomers to the generation X and the dot-comers is changing the needs of the consumers and therefore brands that had a steady name that worked well for the baby boom generation are experiencing the need to rearrange their image and sometimes this may even mean readjusting their core values.

BMW knows its brand is made by image branding, and have quite some experience in doing so. This is why it is not strange that they are ahead of the game. The associations they want people to have are still the same, but only hipper. The luxury is still there, but now it is clear that this luxury is not only for baby boomers, but also for the generation X and the dot-comers.

BMW tries to stay ahead of the game and is developing different kinds of branding along with the ‘regular’ ones. The international market is monitoring closely which steps BMW is taking and other carbrands seem to have no problem with the fact that BMW is trying all these different methods. They seem to wait and see what will happen. BMW started showing flash movies on their site, so Volvo, Audi and Mercedes followed.

This way all the involved parties seem satisfied with how the market is shifting slowly. BMW is selling enough cars to stay firm on the market.

For the future it is important to make sure the viral marketing keeps being fed, so consumers will still visit the BMW sites while surfing the net. This will be harder when more businesses start making lucrative viral marketing advertisements. When an overload rises, BMW probably has found a new way of keeping us busy.