Brand
BMW USA
Project
David Bowie Is Activation
Services
Creative Direction, Strategy, Production, Writing, Editing
Challenge: BMW had signed up to be a top-line sponsor of the David Bowie Is exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. Great show, but it wasn't really an obvious fit for the brand. Meanwhile, the hashtag we were made to use was, uh, less than ideal. We had to make all of this work anyway.
Solution: Add something to David Bowie Is. Namely, that Bowie the man was a longtime New Yorker. So we put together a photoshoot around some of his old haunts in Greenwich Village. While everything would be used on Instagram later, the shoot itself took place in the middle of the day, and we promoted it through Twitter as a live, as-it-happened scavenger hunt.
Result: In two days, our hyper-localized campaign resulted in over 130 UGC posts. And despite the awkward hashtag and a last-minute technicality forcing us to remove David Bowie Is branding from the vehicle, the audience figured it out and sentiment was 93% positive, with favorable comments about the styling of the X2.