For TV, there are strict regulations to follow. Advertising must be easily recognised as such and must differ from factual content. The designation of advertising and its distinction from the programme is set out by law in Germany.

Covert advertising is prohibited and that’s set in stone. Section 4 of the German Unfair Competition Act covers: “Examples of unfair business practices” while Section 3 states: “Unfairness shall have occurred in particular where a person conceals the promotional nature of commercial practices”. This therefore also prohibits covert advertising.

We found a solution for our campaign: We can circumvent the legal restrictions by integrating statements by fans and consumers into the advertising. This means there is no covert advertising and it cannot be understood as part of the programme.

The media implemented the crowd advertising concept consistently in all channels: headings in print, online and social media advertising came from fan posts. All digital channels had a direct feedback loop to the fan stream.

For broader communication of the fans’ enthusiasm, mass media also became a crowd advertising platform: the first mobile OOH fan stream projected fan posts live in the centres of Germany’s six biggest cities.

One highlight was the high-profile TV event for “Schlag den Raab”, where two-word posts by the fans were integrated live using real-time graphics into the TVC for the new 2 Series Coupé.

1. Fan Stream: over 63,000 visits and more than 1,300 two-word comments with high activation potential:

• In the social media area, best-ever performance values regarding click rates (4.59%).

• In total, 16.9 million contacts and 1.3 million actions (clicks/views/likes/shares/comments/…) on social media alone.

• Exceptional performance of the basic online campaign in terms of CTR (1.23%) (355% higher CTR than the BMW series campaign average and 26% lower CPC).

• In total, 875,800 clicks and 109.6 million contacts in the online display and mobile area.

2. According to BMW Communication Monitor: positive impact on the targeted elements of ‘brand identity’ and ‘ad evaluation’: best-ever performance values for ‘dynamic’, ‘aesthetic’, ‘overall likeability’ and ‘likeability of model’.