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Belch: Advertising and
Promotion, Sixth Edition
II. Integrated Marketing
Program Situation Analysis
3. Organizing for
Advertising & Promotion
Madison Avenue Goes Hollywood
In the spring of 2000, the creative group at the
Fallon Worldwide agency assigned to the BMW
North America account was in the process of
developing a new branding campaign for the
German automaker. Both the BMW and Fallon
people were becoming increasingly concerned
with their ability to reach their core market of
overachieving, hard-working consumers via traditional
methods such as network television.
BMW had done three different campaigns
recently emphasizing responsive performance
with product-focused ads designed to show
what it’s like behind the wheel of a BMW. However,
from the perspective of both the client and
the agency, the look and feel of the ads had
begun to be copied by competitors and wannabes,
making them less distinctive than before.
Meanwhile, their research indicated that many
Bimmer buyers were tech-savvy and had fast,
reliable access to the Internet; most importantly,
85 percent of them had researched their car purchase
on the Web before stepping into a dealer
showroom.
© The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2003
As the creative team worked to develop a new
branding campaign for BMW, concern over the
effectiveness of traditional media advertising
and curiosity over how to exploit the popularity
of the Internet among car buyers were two key
factors they were considering. Another creative
team at Fallon had recently completed
a campaign for Timex that incorporated
an Internet element by featuring
short video clips developed
specifically for the Web. So the idea
emerged of doing something for the
Web that would be not only entertaining
but also cinematic. However, the
associative creative director for the
BMW group at Fallon noted that the
goal was to do a different level of web
film—one that by its very nature
would call attention to itself and
could be promoted like regular films.
The agency took the web film concept to Anonymous
Content, a Hollywood production company,
where director David Fincher is a partner.
Fincher took the original concept for a longer
film that would be shot in segments and suggested
instead a series of stand-alone shorts,
each directed by a marquee name. He also came
up with the idea for a central character, the Driver,
played by young British actor Clive Owen,
who appears in all the films as a James
Bond–type driver who takes such costars as
Madonna, Mickey Rourke, and Stellan Skarsgaard
for the ride of their lives in a BMW.
The series of five- to seven-minute films created
by Fallon and Anonymous Content is called
“The Hire,” and the films have been directed by
big names such as Ang Lee, John Franeheimer,
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