BMW 1-Series Marks Automaker's Biggest Online Effort Yet

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A campaign now under way for the BMW 1-Series makes extensive use of nontraditional media and is trying to promote the tiny compact coupe and convertible as a "pure BMW," The New York Times reports.

Patrick McKenna, manager for marketing communications at BMW of North America in Woodcliff Lake, N.J., told The New York Times that the 1-Series introduction represents “the highest concentration of nontraditional media of any BMW launch.”

Almost half the spending for the campaign, estimated at $15 million to $25 million, is devoted to online media, the paper reports. By comparison, Internet ad spending for other models ranges from 1 percent to 15 percent of the total ad budgets, BMW executives told the paper.

The online elements of the 1-Series campaign include: letting members of the Facebook social-networking site design virtual cars and send them to Facebook friends; buying dominant positions on the home pages of msn.com and yahoo.com; posting video clips on YouTube; and developing a microsite devoted to the 1-Series.

The New York Times' advertising column in Monday's paper points out unconventional approaches for the traditional media as well. Three magazines — City, Dwell and Paste — are printing pure-white covers that are glued over the actual front covers of the issues; there are ads for the 1-Series on the other sides of the extra covers. Magazines like City and AutoWeek are running tiny ads for the 1-Series with numerical themes at the bottom of editorial pages, which double as page-number identifications. For instance, a tiny ad for a white car on page 26 of the April issue of City is next to this sentence: “26: number of bones in right foot you’ll use to crush the gas pedal on the all-new BMW 1-Series.” At the bottom of page 60, there is a miniature red car and this sentence: “60: m.p.h. you can reach in 5.1 seconds with the all-new BMW 135i coupe.”

The general gist of the campaign seeks to reassure potential buyers that the new model is indeed a “pure BMW” despite being smaller and less expensive.

The ads are a collaboration between two agencies: GSD&M Idea City in Austin, Tex., part of the Omnicom Group, and Dotglu in New York, part of the Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners division of MDC Partners.

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