What sort of assets will the school get and how will it be displayed?
Over the past several months, we’ve collected from various sources––particularly alumni—television commercials, magazine ads, newspaper ads and outdoor postings. They’ve all been converted and digitalized so that they’ll be easily accessed and available.
How did the ‘Ultimate Driving Machine’ come about?
It’s one of my favorite examples of the process of creation. Great creative work, and great creative leaps forward in any field, are almost always a combination of art and science. Facts and intuition. Leaps into space.
Had we taken research for gospel back in 1974, when Cadillac and Lincoln were America’s unchallenged idea of expensive luxury sedans, we would have concluded that the primary prospects for a dramatically undramatic but equally as expensive BMW 2002, were overweight, martini-guzzling, cigar-chomping, country club denizens in their 60s.
But we trusted our intuition. And our intuition told us that a movement had begun, a movement that would soon sweep the world––the Yuppie and the beginning of physical fitness and eating right and high performance in everything.
Our campaign spoke to them. A car is a very personal expression of self. And Cadillacs and Lincolns didn’t look or perform like Yuppies. But BMW was making the car that embodied their values. It was designed by racing engineers for people who had the good sense to value high performance over thousands of pounds of chrome and fins. It was The Ultimate Driving Machine. All we had to do was tell them in language that the Yuppies would understand.
What has made the phrase and the campaign so enduring?
The whole of the advertising business can be summed up in one simple phrase: ‘What is the one thing I can say to you that if I said it would make you want to buy one?’ Sometimes it can be difficult to find that one thing. But when you find it and put it into the right words, that’s a Big Idea.
The Ultimate Driving Machine is a Big Idea that will celebrate its 50th birthday on Dece. 22, 2023. How does that happen? It happens because it still expresses the heart and soul of BMW. It’s both a statement of purpose and a promise. It endures because it is still the very essence of who BMW is.
