Our brief was to launch the BMW M5 and use it as a halo vehicle to promote the BMW M line up, their high performance range of vehicles.

But we didn't want to create another typical commercial. Instead, we decided to give the public and bloggers something to talk about: an unconventional art piece.

To communicate that the M5 is not only the world’s fastest sedan, but also the most luxurious, we created a film inspired by slow motion bullet footage – but on a grander scale. Exciting high-speed driving was inter-cut with serene super slow motion sequences to show the true beauty of the M5’s power. The result? High performance art.

Bus shelters, rich media, and targeted banners drove traffic to our film on YouTube.

Large format out of home board showcased the M line up and we populated BMW Canada's YouTube channel with videos showcasing the entire M range.

The film received over 3 million views in its first 8 days.

But something isn't truly art, unless people want to discuss it.

Our film was the # 1 Most Discussed, Most Favourited, Most Viewed, and Most Liked Automotive Video on all of YouTube in June and July.

270,000+ Facebook shares.

10,000+ Tweets

331 blog posts

The M line up sales exceeded target by 21%.

And M5 sales exceeded target by over 14%.

Objectives

1. Create desire for the new M5 and maximize the share factor.

2. Showcase M line up.

Sales Targets

1. Sell 217 units of the new BMW M5.

2. Sell 772 M vehicles in total.

Target

Male. 45. High income. Well educated. Enjoys the finer things in life.

Active in the digital space. Consumes a lot of video content online.

The film received over 3 million views in its first 8 days and 4.7 million to date.

But views aren't everything – we also wanted to get people talking:

Our film was the # 1 Most Discussed, Most Favourited, Most Viewed, and Most Liked Automotive Video on all of YouTube in June and July.

270,000+ Facebook shares.

10,000+ Tweets

331 blog posts

Coverage included: CNN. Mashable. Fast Company. Jalopnik. The Discover Channel. Top Gear. Creativity. Ad Week. PSFK. Strategy. MotorTrend. The Globe & Mail. And even 50 Cent’s Blog.

SALES RESULTS

M line up sales:

Target:772

Actual: 936

Exceeded target by 21%.

M5 sales:

Target: 217

Actual: 248

Exceeded target by over 14%.

Best of all, Mercedes-Benz had outsold BMW the first 7 months of the year – but following launch, BMW outsold Mercedes-Benz for four months straight and went on to finish the year #1 in the premium segment.

To communicate that the M5 is not only the world’s fastest sedan, but also the most luxurious, we created a film inspired by slow motion bullet footage – but on a grander scale. Exciting high-speed driving was inter-cut with serene super slow motion sequences to show the true beauty of the M5’s power. The result? High performance art.

We launched our film on YouTube with no paid media support, posting it to the BMW Facebook page to allow organic sharing.

Within 8 days, the video had over three million views.

After two weeks, bus shelters, video boards, and rich media banners drove traffic to YouTube.

We populated BMW Canada's YouTube channel with videos showcasing the entire M range.

The campaign was later supported by cinema.

The highest volume vehicle in the BMW M line up, the M3, was in the final year of its lifecycle, which meant it would sell far fewer units than in previous years and was "old news".

The new BMW M5 achieved a record-breaking lap time for a sedan on the Nurburgring track, the standard for determining the world's fastest production vehicles. This made the M5 the ideal "hero" vehicle to promote the M range.

Although the M5 is the world's fastest sedan, it is also the most luxurious. So we needed to deliver the speed story in a premium manner.

The year prior, we launched an extremely successful viral campaign for BMW. We noticed bloggers were busy (or simply lazy) and had a tendency to just copy/paste the title and video description of our videos into the content of their articles.

Having noticed this behaviour, we understood that when making our content to promote the M5, it was in our best interests to provide bloggers the tools they need to create their articles with minimal effort. Once the bloggers shared the video, we were confident the public sharing the content through social media channels would be close behind.

Our brief was that the M5 was the fastest and most luxurious sedan in the world. But we knew this didn’t provide the “hook” bloggers wanted to create content, which is why we created the concept of “High Performance Art”.

This way bloggers could post it and ask, “Is it art? Discuss."