New BMW TV Ad to Show a Wrecking Ball Striking Fallingwater

[pharding]

BMW's new ad campaign, targeting the creative class, includes a TV ad showing a wrecking ball hitting Fallingwater. It builds on the idea that maverick designers, i.e. FLW, are critical to creativity. More recognition for FLW. His stock continues to rise.



Excerpts of the article from Business week on line follow below.



"...............The targeting of the creative class is an idea inspired by Richard Florida, a Carnegie-Mellon University professor who has written three books on this "class" of people, who include scientists, engineers, architects, educators, writers, artists, and entertainers. Their economic function is to create new ideas, new technology, and new creative content. Members of this group, which is about 38 million strong, share common characteristics, such as being driven in work and family by creativity, individuality, diversity, and merit.



THE NEED TO BE LIKED. "More than anything, they live by the power of ideas, and admire companies and people who champion creativity and ideas," says GSD&M president Roy Spence. Ironically, according to a ranking of U.S. cities by Florida, who consulted on the new BMW campaign, Austin is the No. 1 market for the creative class.



The tone in some of the ads reminds me of the dynamic played out in the hit British TV series The Office, in which the office manager is depicted comically as a man obsessed with being loved and not rocking the corporate boat. Corporations, say image and marketing consultants, are driven more these days than in past years by the desire to be liked by customers as well as employees.



"There's an influential class of consumers, maybe it's the creative class, who make buying decisions based in part on how they feel toward a company and what it stands for," says Dennis Keene, an independent consultant who advises companies on marketing strategy. BMW, says Keene, has come a long way since the 1980s, "and has good stories to tell that could legitimately change some perceptions."



IDEAS ON A PEDESTAL. Unusual for BMW, several print and TV ads show and discuss BMW's Leipzig, Germany, plant, which was designed by world-renowned architect Zaha Hadid. The factory is a design statement that includes a workspace for white-collar employees, whose desks sit below an almost silent assembly line carrying BMW bodies to another assembly line for completion. "A parent company would never let us build this," reads the ad.



Some TV spots depict stereotypical corporate-cog executives who squelch creativity and initiative. "Beware of the compromisers. They say things like, 'Choose your battles,' or 'Is this idea really worth falling on your sword for?' " Later, the recurring message throughout the campaign comes in, "At BMW, ideas are everything."



In another TV spot, a wrecking ball slams into Frank Lloyd Wright's "Falling Water" house, and a Jackson Pollock painting sits in the dumpster, contrasting BMW to companies that don't value maverick artists and designers............"



Here's the full article. http://yahoo.businessweek.com/autos/con ... 260847.htm