Focus: *S,C,P,F...Spain BMW's "love to drive?" campaign

Graphis, Sep/Oct 2002

*S,C,P,F... is an advertising agency founded in 1996, with offices in Barcelona and Madrid. Graphis asked Toni Segarra, executive creative director and founding partner of *S,C,P,F... to comment on their campaign for BMW, which has garnered significant recognition at the San Sebastian and Cannes Festivals, winning two Gold Lions and two Bronze Lions in 2000.

*S,C,P,F... focuses on giving value to a brand by identifying its universe and building its territory. Segarra believes it is easier to convey messages from universal truths, while adding irony and poetry. He also believes completely in the intelligence of the consumer. *S,C,P,F... was able to implement these notions with the highly visible BMW campaign, a longterm project that has given them the opportunity to modify and refine their strategy along the way.

Toni Segarra: "*S,C,P,F... has had a long relationship with BMW. We set up the agency six years ago, and a few months later BMW called us to submit a pitch for their entire account (From the beginning, a friendly rivalry with Barcelona-based Tandem CG DOB Inspired us to surpass their Audi ad campaign, the number one model of creative car advertising.) We were selected as finalists along with two other agencies (Solucion and Tapsa). In the end we lost the bid, but we had already established some of the strategic solutions that we would later use, including the slogan "Love to drive?" I suppose it was that slogan, two years later, which prompted BMW to invite us back to submit a new pitch. This time we managed to convince the marketing department as well as the president of the company. The positioning of BMW in Spain is substantially different from BMW's image in other countries. The main problem arises from the decadence of yuppy-ism, the unscrupulous, get-rich-quick culture which began to decline in the early '90s. The rich bankers who owned luxurious BMWs soon ended up In jail, and BMW in Spain became associated with this tainted personality. The brand took on a certain, almost criminal, air of ostentation. During those years, BMW's corporate communications department made no attempt to correct the problem, but simply based its ads on the technological excellence of the product, remaining cold and distant from the consumer.

Meanwhile, Audi took advantage of the return to a more honest, more ethical culture and managed to position itself at the same level as Mercedes and BMW. This was an unusual phenomenon which occurred throughout the world. The staff at the BMW headquarters in Germany couldn't understand how Audi, generally perceived as a lower brand, equated themselves with BMW in Spain, and this was the scenario that we found ourselves in when we started working for BMW.

There was yet another difficult problem to solve, which in fact provided us with a key to the solution. Audi has long based its advertising on one outstanding characteristic: total traction. That hurt BMW, which has always obsessively placed its stake on rear-wheel drive-though preferred by good drivers, it has always caused problems for the less experienced driver. This obsession lead to the solution. We quickly realized how stubbornly the engineers at BMW considered their drivers, creating perfect driving vehicles, sometimes at the cost of making Inexplicable marketing decisions. For instance, they decided to reduce the horsepower for one model because they believed drivers would not be able to use It.

We realized BMW's mistake: Obsessed by the technological sophistication of their products, they forgot the one thing that was more valuable: driving. In a few words, what BMW asked us to do was to transfer the very essence of the brand, from an obsession with producing perfect vehicles into an obsession with perfect driving. The other change that BMW needed to undertake was in their approach toward the customer: to stop being seen as a cold, distant and pretentious brand. Clearly this could not be carried out in a short period of time.

During our first year with BMW the strategy consisted of explaining certain characteristics of the product not usually associated with the brand-from a human point of view. We completely changed the perspective from that of the factory-"Look what great cars we make"-to a driver's point of view-- "What reason do I have to buy this car?" The biggest success in the first year was our campaign for the Coupe. it was about failing passionately in love with the car, rather than purchasing it based on any kind of rational criteria. In one of the two TV spots, a father of a large family (12 children) makes several trips to take the children to school In his coupe instead of buying a "people-carrier." In the other, a methodical and hyper-rational character explains why he has done the things in his life (why he married his wife, why he has two children, why he bought this dog, etc), but Is incapable of finding a single reason for why he bought his Coupe. It was interesting because the negative stereotype of the BMW buyer soon dissolved. We showed ordinary people, even slightly ugly and a little strange, in love with the brand.