Text by Thomas SCHWARTZ
When BMW founded its North American subsidiary in 1975, the brand had barely any presence in the US market—only about 15,000 vehicles sold per year, a thin dealer network, little brand awareness. Yet within just a few years, the German automaker would develop into a benchmark for driving culture in North America as well. A transformation driven not only by new economic structures, consistent technical quality and innovation, but also by powerful messages in its communication. Early advertising campaigns document how BMW shaped a distinctive, strong brand identity for the US market.
A decisive moment was the collaboration with New York advertising agency Ammirati & Puris. Co-founder and copywriter Martin Puris created in 1975 that claim which remains relevant to this day: »The Ultimate Driving Machine«. A concise formulation that positioned BMW perfectly as a vehicle for people who cared primarily about performance and driving feel. In a sense, a more powerful variant of »Freude am Fahren« (The Joy of Driving), as it has been called at Munich headquarters since 1965.
The visual language of the US advertising campaigns from 1975 onward was typically characterized by color-intensive photography, dominantly placed headlines, and long text passages, as was common in American magazines of the 1970s and 1980s. However, the copy did not work with exuberant narrative constructions, but primarily presented technical arguments: weight distribution, steering feel, engine character (»Why cars with similar mechanical parts still don’t perform like BMW«). This rather matter-of-fact tone, which also deliberately avoided positioning the brand as a luxury product (»Our status symbol is under the hood, not on it«), was thus a strategically clever counterpoint to the communication strategy of many competitors at the time.
In parallel, BMW used motorsport as a highly visible stage. The victory of the 3.0 CSL at the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1975 was not only a spectacular sporting success with enormous broad appeal, but also a signal to the market. BMW consequently leveraged the surging enthusiasm for the brand in its communication as well, yet still without pathos. The visual language of advertising campaigns from that era shows cars that are by no means heroized, but rather made visible in their performance and technology.
Also characteristic of BMW North America were messages that combined European engineering culture with American directness. The brand defined itself not through status, but through terms like »Drivers’ Car«. In the 1980s and 1990s, this approach was further refined, with ads that described driving as an active endeavor, through precision, control, and the ability to consciously command the car. Only in the late 1990s and early 2000s did the advertising presence and visual language change markedly: the US campaigns became more reduced, image-centered, and conceptual, without abandoning the focus on driving dynamics and engineering excellence.
Looking into the archive of historic advertising campaigns from roughly 50 years of BMW of North America documents not only the success story of a brand in the critically important and fiercely competitive US market, but also the establishment of its own visual and linguistic identity. Because four words have shaped the brand in the US just as much as the cars they refer to: »The Ultimate Driving Machine«—in a sense, »The Ultimate Ad Slogan«.
