case study bmw
TRANSCRIPT
April 2007 • Admap 17© World Advertising Research Center 2007
FADE IN: An impossibly handsome manguides his convertible up to a dilapidatedhouse on a deserted street. He exits; his
white suit glints in the sun as he surveys thelandscape from behind impenetrable sunglass-es. In his hand, a metallic attaché case.Members of a SWAT team manoeuvre silentlybehind a fence. The driver takes out his cellphone and dials. A man’s voice answers. Thedriver says simply ‘I’m here.’
The latest Hollywood blockbuster? Aprime-time TV drama?
Neither. It’s advertising. Or, more accu-rately, advertising on steroids, akabranded entertainment.
This is the opening of ‘The Hostage’, produced by BMW and their former adagency, Fallon, employing A-list directorJohn Woo. To understand why this andseven other BMW films were made, oneneed only look to the challenges facing thelong-time prime brand-advertising venue:TV. Media platforms are multiplying; theinternet moves ever closer to being our primary source of information, music andentertainment; and TV recording technol-ogy allows for easier ad-skipping.Advertisers worldwide are searching fornew ways to use the power of film to reachincreasingly elusive viewers.
It is easy to be drawn in to these filmsand forget that they had, from their incep-tion, a purpose beyond brilliantentertainment. Our question, and that ofmany, is did they work as advertising?
FADE IN: We hear a clicking camera shut-ter and rapid breathing as we peer through
tall grass. Across the field, a gang of men carrying automatic weapons force a group ofpeople from the back of truck. Click. The thugsline the locals up, hands on head. Click, click.It’s over quickly: one woman screams, thereare shots, and bodies fall to the ground. Thegrass rustles as the hidden photographer racesthrough the field, breathless, and not silentenough. Two gunmen hear him and shootblindly into the grass. We hear a body fall, seedog tags suspended, and the words ‘TimesWar Photographer, Harvey Jacobs, waswounded after witnessing the massacre atNuevo Colon. In a desperate effort, the UnitedNations sent a vehicle to get him out.’
A single research statistic promptedBMW to try a new approach to reachpotential customers: 85% of BMW buyerschecked the brand’s website before buying a vehicle. In a bold strategy thatwould define current standards of excel-lence in branded entertainment, BMWdecided to shift its strategy from ‘push’ to‘pull’. Commissioning eight top directorsto make short films featuring its cars,BMW launched them on its website in2001, while reducing spending on TV ads.
Unqualified success?In terms of buzz, the films were an unqual-ified success. Within a year, the films wereviewed more than 10 million times. Twomillion people registered on the site afterviewing the films and 60% signed up toreceive more information via email. Ofthese, an amazing 94% recommended thefilms to others, and over 40,000 people
volunteered to respond to a survey. ByOctober 2005, when the films were takendown, they had been viewed more than100 million times and reviewed as ‘cine-ma’ by Time and the New York Times.
Yet, despite this evidence of success,BMW discontinued the experiment.Why? According to a 2005 article in AdAge, it got too expensive. Whatever thereason, little has been made publiclyavailable on what the ‘Hire’ films boughtfor the brand. As any advertiser in thisnascent field will tell you, entertainmentis only half the equation. The brandedpart, the ability of the films to ring the corporate register in Munich, was alwayswhere BMW rubber met the road.
As advertising researchers, we atAmeritest are interested in understandinghow this new genre of branded entertain-ment works, at a deeper level than simpleawareness, to contribute to the brand. Sowe decided to test two of the films: ‘TheHostage’, directed by John Woo, and ‘Powder Keg’, directed by Alejandro Gon-zalez Iñárritu.
One worked, one did notWe found that one movie worked veryhard to build the brand’s image in the eyesof the consumer; but the other did not.
As you can see in Table 1, after viewershave seen ‘The Hostage’, there is a pre-to-post increase in perceptions of BMW as aleader in innovation and dominating theluxury car category. There is also a lift forsuperior handling and an exhilarating
Charles Young and Amy Shea Hall, Ameritest, examine a famous piece ofbranded entertainment, and show how two similar films have different effects
Case study: BMW movies –luxury car to movie star
‘The Hostage’ ‘Powder Keg’
A B A BBMW BMW BMW BMW
Pre-viewing Post-viewing Pre-viewing Post-viewing
BMW … (49) (49) (49) (49)
is a leader in innovation engineering and technology for automobiles 61 83 A 72 80understands high performance means greater safety 61 57 64 72enhances the joy of driving 74 78 84 76creates an exhilarating driving experience 70 87 A 72 76has superior handling 57 74 A 76 88dominates the luxury car category 48 70 A 80 B 56
A/B = significant difference at 90% confidence level
Pre to post ratings – ‘Powder keg’ and ‘Hostage’
TABLE 1
brandedentertainment
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driving experience. In contrast, for ‘Powder Keg’ there is actually a decrease inperception of BMW as a luxury brand –not surprising, perhaps, for a film thatshows the BMW in a poverty-strickenenvironment. But none of the other brandratings improved.
As an investment, then, branded enter-tainment appears risky, with the odds ofsuccess here no better than 50/50. So wewanted to learn how research could helpmanage that risk, as for our clients’ tradi-tional advertising films. Our firstquestion, therefore, was why BMW brandratings were lifted by ‘The Hostage’ butnot by ‘Powder Keg’.
To understand how films work as adsyou need to understand how they work asfilms. Every writing teacher has a way totalk about the guts of a story. Some call itthe ‘core theme’, some the ‘pulse’ of thestory: we find Robert McKee’s film termmost applicable: the ‘controlling idea’.McKee, screenwriting consultant andauthor of the book Story, defines this as ‘astory’s meaning expressed through itsaction and emotional climax’.
Since making brands is ultimatelyabout making products or services mean-ingful to consumers, understanding howmeaning is expressed through a film’saction and emotional climax – the con-trolling idea-is of critical importance to
understanding how it works as advertis-ing. The controlling idea concept providesa useful framework for managing the creation of branded entertainment. But tomake effective use of it, we also need toground theory in measurement. We needtools for measuring the audience’s cogni-tive and emotional response to film, andto measure, from the audience perspec-tive, the meaning of film images.
Branding momentsWe have pioneered the use of picture sorts to measure moment-by-momentaudience response to commercials, both interms of cognitive processing and emotion-al engagement. We have publishedvalidation of our Flow of Attention®, toshow how the rhythm and tempo of visualstorytelling peaks are related to attention-getting power and the formation ofadvertising memories, as measured byrecall testing and tracking studies.
We have also shown how a second picture sort, the Flow of Emotion®,explains how different dramatic structurescreate viewer engagement and persuasion,to move consumers closer to the brand. Wehave shown that these two dimensions ofaudience response are independent, providing two distinct, but equally impor-tant, points of view for examining theinternal structure of ads. But until now, we
haven’t shared the full power gained whenyou put the two together – the focal pointsof the mind and the dramatic beat of the heart – to identify the BrandingMoments™ of advertising film.
Objectively, ‘film’ is a mechanical system that creates the illusion of move-ment by reproducing equidistantsnapshots of time to create the perceptionof continuity. In this mechanistic view,each instant of time captured on film isequally important for creating the illusion. Artistically, though, movementis related to privileged instants – certainmoments in the film that take on particu-lar significance. According to the Frenchphilosopher of film, Gilles Deleuze, ‘thecinema seems to thrive on privilegedinstants. It is often said that Eisensteinextracted from movements or develop-ments certain moments of crises, whichhe made the subject of the cinema parexcellence. This is precisely what he calledthe ‘pathetic’: he picks out peaks andshouts, he pushes scenes to their climax and brings them into collision.’
The meaningful moments of film arewhere thoughts and emotions cometogether. This is the essence of a work ofart, according to McKee, ‘Because in lifeidea and emotion come separately. Mindand passions revolve in different spheresof our humanity, rarely coordinated, usually at odds.’
Research can identify these privilegedmoments of a piece of film, where thethoughts and emotions of the audiencecome together, by plotting the Flow ofAttention against the Flow of Emotion, ina grid like that in Figure 1. The images inthe upper right-hand quadrant are, by def-inition, the ones that stand out the mostin terms of both attention and audience emotions. In a previous Admaparticle we showed that these privilegedmoments (maximum thought + maxi-mum feelings) are where long-termadvertising memories are formed. Theseare the branding moments of ad films.
In ‘The Hostage’, Clive Owen’s charac-ter, the Driver, is tasked with finding afemale CEO of a burger chain. She has beenkidnapped by an ex-employee, played byMaury Chaykin, who, when we meet him,
brandedentertainment
High attention/low emotion
Low attention/low emotion
Flow of emotion images
Flow
of
atte
nti
on im
ages
FIGURE 1
Branding moments: when attention and emotion meet
High attention/high emotion
Low attention/high emotion
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has merely a passing acquaintance withsanity. The Driver, pulling up to the kid-napper’s run-down lair in his BMW Z4Roadster, exits the car. Standing in thestreet in his white suit, the Driver is themodern-day gunfighter in this homage tothe American western, which John Woo’scamera reflects without losing the film’scontemporary currency. The mental andphysical strength of the Driver is tested ashe races against time, riding his BMW stal-lion to the rescue of the woman, whoinstead of being tied to the tracks, is insidethe boot of a car sinking in the rising tide.
In Iñárritu’s ‘Powder Keg’ a rescue isalso taking place, but of a different sort.Clive Owen, again as the Driver, is sent torescue a photographer. The photographerhas been wounded by gunmen he has doc-umented massacring farmers in a remotefield in a place called Nuevo Colon. Thephotographer, played by Swedish actorStellan Skarsgard, is picked up by the Driver in a BMW SUV to be taken acrossthe border to safety, where he can deliverthe evidence of this latest act of brutality.Of course, this is not an easy ride, as the‘authorities’ are anxious not to see photog-rapher and film end up across the border.
A branding-moments analysis of filmcreates a set of pictures that represents theessence of the film from the audience perspective – the bones of the story. Youcould arrange these pictures into story-board and use it to describe the film,leaving out no dramatic event.
On the first dimension of audienceresponse, the Flow of Attention, what wesaw with ‘The Hostage’ was that moreimages made it past the gatekeeper of themind than for ‘Powder Keg’. If you’ve seenthe films, this is easily understood. ‘TheHostage’ is a much more complex film,with more visual information than ‘Pow-der Keg’, which has much of its action onthe same dirt road.
On the second dimension, the Flow ofEmotion, peak emotional moments weremore numerous in ‘Powder Keg’ than in‘The Hostage’. Again, this should not be a surprise. ‘Powder Keg’, with its massacre,martyrdom and grieving mother is a moving portrayal of a few minutes in awar photographer’s life. However, in
branded entertainment, as in other adver-tising, the quantity of emotion is notenough. If that emotion is not put to workfor the brand, it’s not branded.
When we look at what moments makeit into both peak attention and peak emo-tion, the branding moments, there ismerely a single image of the BMW in ‘Pow-der Keg’, compared to 45% of the shotsfeaturing the brand in ‘The Hostage’. Yetthis is not a matter of time on screen: theBMW is on screen longer in ‘Powder Keg’.
The controlling ideaThe explanation is tied directly to howthese stories are constructed. FollowingMcKee’s definition, we should be able todemonstrate that both action and emo-tional climax tie back seamlessly to thecontrolling idea. Based on qualitativeresearch, here is our interpretation of thecontrolling ideas of these two films.� The Hostage: life is worth saving even if
that life is corrupt.� Powder Keg: corruption is worth fight-
ing, even if we fail.This concept also identifies each film’sprotagonist, and what instrument he usesto carry out the controlling idea.
In ‘The Hostage’, the Driver rescues thewoman and saves her life, only to discoverthat she was having an affair with the kid-napper and then discarded him. Theaction of the entire film is the saving ofher life. And the emotional climax of thefilm is learning that the life the Driversaved is corrupt. Yet the data show theemotional response to the Driver is as ahero. Positive emotional response to himas he drives into the sunset is not dimin-ished by the quality of the life he saved.
Following this controlling idea, the pro-tagonist is the Driver – the saver of life. Theheroic instrument is the BMW Z4 – with-out which viewers told us they wereunsure that he could succeed.
Contrast this with ‘Powder Keg’.Here, the photographer’s rescue is built
around his life story. He recounts the wars,the photos he has taken trying to changethe world and fight corruption. He has sacrificed his home life, and his own, tothis fight. The film’s action is the story of fighting corruption. The emotional
climax? An ambiguous victory. The pho-tographer is posthumously awarded aPulitzer, while the Driver brings the deadphotographer’s dog tags to his blind moth-er. Will anything change? Who knows,but the photographer is no less heroic.
The protagonist is the one who carriesout the controlling idea: the photogra-pher who fights corruption. The heroicinstrument? The film – not the car.
Branded entertainment is not the sameas product placement. In branded enter-tainment, the brand is not placed in thestory: the brand is an instrument in thestory – you couldn’t imagine anotherbrand in its place. What then does theaudience, the final arbiter of these control-ling ideas, have to say? From qualitativeinterviews we learned that the BMW wasthe hero in one movie, but not the other:
‘I couldn’t stop thinking about the car …maybe another kind of car, it would havefallen off the bridge.’ (‘Hostage’ viewer)
‘The car seemed out of place. Anyway,it wasn’t about the car. It just happened tobe a BMW.’ (‘Powder Keg’ viewer)
When the picture-sort data are exam-ined, we find the audience understoodthese films all along. In ‘The Hostage’,which lifted ratings of brand BMW, thebeauty shot of the Z4 car was the strongestimage when it comes to both attentionand emotion. For ‘Powder Keg’ it was theimage of the bloody film on the car seat.
Years of analysing and conductingresearch on advertising film remind usrepeatedly of the cognitive and emotionalintelligence behind how viewers processstories on film. While film may be relatively modern, stories are not, and it iscritical to our understanding of brandedentertainment to neglect neither narrative nor visual structure in ourexamination. If advertisers are going to besuccessful in making good branded enter-tainment, or even product integrationthat works and makes good sense, theycan’t start in a better place than employ-ing the rigours of research to understandexactly how viewers watch film andprocess brand stories. ■
More on branded entertainment at WARC.com
Amy Shea Hall is vice president and research
director at Ameritest. Shemanages research projects
ranging from packagedgoods to financial services
to high [email protected]
Chuck Young is founder andCEO of Ameritest, an
international advertising andbrand research company. In
his 20 years in theadvertising business Chuck
has worked extensively in the packaged goods, retail,
fast food, entertainment,automotive,
telecommunications and e-commerce categories.
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