General information

Campaign objectives: 

Build awareness for BMW’s EV line. BMW wanted to share the story of their business transformation to capture the leading spot in the EV market. They were creating best-in-class products to deliver that change.

Context

EV buyers are often interested but sceptical, requiring a long buying journey. Traditional OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) and new entrants are promoting their efforts through press releases and big claims, often without real-world products to back them up. Today’s luxury consumers aren’t convinced by mere claims; they choose brands that genuinely live up to their promises and buy from companies that share their values.

Research showed that the complex messages on sustainability that BMW wanted to communicate wouldn’t stick in short-form assets or a single sound bite on social media. Canadian audiences didn’t need a proclamation about the brand’s intentions but storytelling that helped humanize and demystify the brand’s mission. The goal was to produce a 10% lift in the understanding of BMW’s strategy and create hundreds of thousands of potential new customers.

They had to educate and entertain, so they created a long-form content strategy to bring a rich story to Canadians and prove that the brand was working on sustainability.

The result was a long form series called  “Forces of Nature,” explored BMW’s work in sustainability. Long-form storytelling could create deeper connections and communicate the brand’s transformation in an interesting format.

They featured a lawyer who left Wall Street to start an urban farm, an entrepreneur who brings renewable electricity to Indigenous communities reliant on diesel, and a data scientist who survived the Rwandan genocide and is developing AI to predict where a hurricane might strike.

The story of renewable energy showed how innovators in remote Northern Ontario are bringing clean power to communities who need it most, and how BMW is powering their factories with green energy. In Vancouver, they highlighted how a pair of entrepreneurs are eliminating single-use plastics in the food industry, and how BMW is reducing waste by making the new iX EV’s components from recycled fish nets and metals.

Creative Minds

CBC, Media Experts, and BMW forged a partnership to tell this story. Their streaming platforms were the perfect fit for launching this show aimed at discerning audiences.

The six full-length episodes of “Forces of Nature” were promoted on CBC Television and hosted natively on CBC Gem. Each episode centered around inspiring individuals committed to sustainability, including entrepreneurs, inventors, and leaders. Each subject paired with one of BMW’s pillars of sustainability, matching their work with BMW’s transformations to highlight the human aspect of the brand’s efforts.

BMW and CBC worked collaboratively with Media Experts to develop this concept. CBC Media Solutions produced it with a director and production team. Together, they found stories that aligned with BMW’s brand values and showcased their transformation story in a compelling series.

To promote the show, they looked to campaigns that launched popular TV shows and movies to create the same excitement for BMW. They created high-impact 60-second, 30-second, and closed captioning spots that teased the series with a cinematic trailer phase. This ran in CBC’s top shows on TV and helped create a dramatic launch phase that built excitement with audiences, mimicking theatrical film launches. They launched episodes weekly over five weeks on CBC Gem, building audiences week over week and continuing to promote the show across their schedule.

Besides airing on CBC Gem, the series was also available on CBC’s YouTube channel to reach viewers on their preferred platforms, with each episode supplemented by bonus written content hosted on a CBC.ca partner site.

After all the episodes were launched, they optimized assets towards top-performing content for the next eight weeks. They ended the campaign by testing a first-of-its-kind content placement, where episodes aired in full as post-roll after long-form content on CBC Gem.

Campaign videos

Results

The campaign’s results proved their mission was a success. Their content strategy paid off, as time with content and views rose gradually to peak at five weeks into the campaign and sustained through to the final week without a drop-off. Long after the campaign concluded, audiences continued to find and enjoy Forces of Nature.

178,000 Canadians, and an additional 378,000 on social media, watched the series. 13,000 hours of the full-length content were consumed, close to double their goal. Their promotional campaign delivered 59 million impressions with digital engagement almost double their benchmark.

Their approach of weaving emotional storytelling, BMW principles, and passive product integration also paid off. Recall was 75% unaided—15% higher than their goal of 60% and 20% higher than historical averages. Aided recall was a near-universal 93%.

Awareness of BMW’s sustainable mission increased by 26%, surpassing their target of a 10% lift by 16%. Additionally, BMW’s net positive impact with audiences reached 70%, which is 10% higher than average. This indicates that most audiences were positively influenced by BMW’s efforts and left with an enhanced perception of the brand.

By leveraging learnings about how to communicate a complex goal, positioning the story first, and ensuring BMW fit into the series naturally, they succeeded in capturing attention and driving impact. The series demonstrated the power of a long-form content strategy to move the needle, proving a lift in understanding and sentiment towards BMW’s sustainability mission.