Well, everyone else is talking about it, so I guess I should offer my opinion, too. In Advertising Age two days ago is an article titled Changing a Winning Ad Slogan for No Good Reason. It boils down to this: BMW is no longer The Ultimate Driving Machine. It’s A Company of Ideas. Bleck.
Not only is it stoopid to drop the most recognized automobile tagline ever used, but to replace it with such mindless, unmeaningful drivel has got to be the most idiotic thing I’ve ever seen. It’s like DMNaskale at mye28.com said:
…ideas are a pretty bland concept with no context to shape them. Dumb ideas, bad ideas, boring ideas, there are lots of ideas out there. The only ideas I want out of BMW are ones that result in ultimate driving machines.
To continue DMN’s thought…this slogan change is a bad idea.
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Run on December 3, 2011
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
False Alarm – BMW Still The Ultimate Driving Machine!
I recently posted about an Adage.com article stating that BMW was dropping their 31 year old slogan for a new one, “A Company of Ideas”. Well, it’s all wrong. If you go back to that post, and take a look…