Press Release
BMW 3 Series: Bringing Five Generations of The Iconic Sports Sedan To Life On The Screen
A year on from launch in Australia and BMW customers have reconfirmed the BMW 3 Series as the iconic sports sedan.
Celebrating five generations of the best driving, best looking and most rewarding to own sports sedan, BMW Group Australia has commissioned an innovative television advertisement to highlight this unbroken run of success as the class benchmark.
The advertisement traces the history of the iconic 3 Series from its genesis as the BMW 2002 in 1968 to the latest E90 3 Series Sedan, with all cars filmed on a race track, and seamlessly morphing from one generation to the next.
In creating the advertisement, BMW and its creative partner, Melbourne based Badjar Group, mixed the latest in computer generated imagery with awesome on track driving, and a unique 360-degree action pan shot of the current and previous generation 3 Series cars.
“While the look of the BMW 3 Series may have changed since the 1968 BMW 2002, the car has remained true to its promise of delivering the most rewarding driving excitement,” says Tom Noble, General Manager, Marketing at BMW Group Australia.
“One year on from launch in Australia and sales prove the BMW 3 Series Sedan is once again confirmed as the iconic sports sedan buyers in the luxury market desire.
“The BMW 3 Series reset the benchmark in the class with its dynamic driving, its leading edge technology, safety and luxury, and above all, its unmatched ownership experience.
“We created this television spot to show how the BMW 3 Series has always been fun to drive, is fun to drive today and will always be fun to drive. That’s what you’d expect from the cornerstone of the BMW brand,” Tom says.
Jack Room, executive creative director of BADJAR Group created a 45-second television spot that embodied the spirit of the BMW 3 Series.
Armed with a vital knowledge base of the 3 Series history, the BADJAR creative team focused on the payoff line: “In 1968 BMW invented the sports sedan and never stopped re-inventing it”.
In the TVC, the cars morph through their generations to the climax, with the evocative music of the Body Rocker’s song “I Like The Way You Move” playing strongly.
With the help of CGI – computer generated imaging – the BADJAR team spent two days on site at the Eastern Creek race track in Sydney filming and then worked their magic in the editing suite.
They had to overcome many hurdles, not the least of which was finding cars in good condition and exactly the same silver colour.
Fortunately the BMW Car Club in NSW came to the party while two professional BMW Driver Training experts were enlisted to drive the cars.
“The BMW Club was a great help but we were still short of one car, which we had to bring up from Melbourne,” Jack Room says.
BADJAR had not done anything like the 3 Series creative for BMW previously.
“We’ve done plenty of television commercials where we have used computer generated imaging, but not to this extent,” Jack says.
“The unique thing about this particular piece is that we wanted to have an archival feel to it to start with and then, as the whole thing progressed, end up with a much more contemporary feel, when the E46 3 Series morphed into the E90.”
To enable that seamless transition, a special rig was built for the money shot, which involved mounting a camera for a 360-degree pan around both an E46 and E90 as one morphs into the other.
“That’s not been done before in Australia on a sports sedan,” Jack says.
With the cars sorted, the weather became another obstacle.
A raging storm the night before the Eastern Creek shoot almost brought the whole program to a halt. Fortunately by the morning of the first day of filming the rain had given way to perfect conditions for filming.
“We used Eastern Creek, partly because it’s an excellent circuit but it also has very clean lines, there are lots of clean horizons,” Jack says.
After the shoot and with the genius of computers in the editing suite, the creatives took some footage of the spectacular mountains around Queenstown in New Zealand to slip into the background.
A crew of 40 people was involved in the making of the spot. The result is a stunning visual feast that amply backs up the positioning concept that the BMW 3 Series is the iconic sports sedan.
“There is no other car in our category that can actually claim this heritage,” Room says.
“Nothing has actually evolved the way the 3 Series has evolved and that’s why it is number one in the world for a luxury sports sedan,” he says.
With such a clearly defined brief, Jack says it was a relatively easy process of coming up with the ad concept.
“Because of its success over time, the BMW 3 Series ultimately represents the brand and is so much of what the brand stands for. It embodies the very essence of the BMW brand.”
