Explosions. Shootouts. Cameos from musical legends James Brown and Madonna and burgeoning Hollywood stars like Clive Owen. And car chases that would make 007 jealous.
These were the elements that made BMW Films' online series "The Hire" a marketing phenomenon that blurred the line between car commercial and action movie. On Sunday, BMW will release a new short film, the brainchild of a trio of Minneapolis admen who spearheaded the original series in 2001.
"The Escape" finds Owen back as the mysterious driver who never fails to transport his cargo despite the danger. The nearly 11-minute short was directed by Neill Blomkamp, who wrote and directed "District 9." It also stars Dakota Fanning, Jon Bernthal and Vera Farmiga.
"What made the original films was the quality of it and that they didn't feel like ads," said Bruce Bildsten, who was the creative director at Minneapolis-based advertising agency Fallon at the time the films were produced and was asked by BMW to help lead the films' reprise.
Bildsten said the new film will be of the same quality as its predecessor. Bildsten, who was recently the chief marketer at Faribault Woolen Mill, was brought back to lead the new project along with other ex-Fallon veterans Brian DiLorenzo, who served as executive producer on "The Escape," and David Carter, who was a creative consultant and co-writer of the film.
"It was unconventional in it's time," DiLorenzo said "It's still a pretty unconventional formula how you put this together, the approach of very much working with the entertainment industry."
In the 1990s, when Fallon was handling BMW's creative account, the luxury vehicle company was a small player in the U.S. car market, with an advertising budget that was just over 1 percent of the total spent by carmakers.
After a successful cross-promotional campaign that featured James Bond driving a BMW Z3 roadster in the popular 1995 movie "GoldenEye," BMW again was open to trying something different. The idea was to create films that would be distributed on the internet, where more and more customers were doing their car research.
"It was a real experiment … you were literally asking people to seek something out that was being put out by a marketer," Carter said.
On the internet, the cars would be able to show their performance in ways that weren't allowed on television, which required drivers to go the speed limit and not cross the white line unless ads gave the annoying tagline that the driving was done by a professional, Carter said.
A car that outruns helicopters
BMW didn't have any new models to introduce at the time but what better way to demonstrate the "Ultimate Driving Machine" than when the car is dodging bullets and outrunning helicopters?
Instead of spending 80 percent of a marketing budget on the media distribution of the content and 20 percent on the production, as is normal in commercials, the Fallon creatives decided to flip the equation and have BMW spend more on getting the best directors and having the best effects, Bildsten said.
"We just let the cars do what they normally do," he said.
In a time before YouTube or high speed internet, the eight-part original series, which came out in installments in 2001 and 2002, was viewed 100 million times. Many viewers had to spend hours to download them.
Time magazine called the series "the ultimate in new-media, high-end branding." The New York Times said it was "startlingly effective." Variety gave the series four stars.
Surveys of consumers before and after the series showed a growth in positive impressions about the BMW brand. Sales rose by double-digits following the release of the original series.
"I think the No. 1 reason why they were successful was that branded entertainment on your computer screen had never really happened," Fred Senn, a founding partner of Fallon, said. "Suddenly there were these short films that were very entertaining and very high quality."
Steven Wehrenberg, an advertising professor at the University of Minnesota, said the BMW films showed companies they could reach consumers through stories.
"Today, brands are really trying to do that all over the place with videos and larger stories," he said.
With so much hype around the revival of the series and the success of the original installment, the question that begs is: Will the new film meet expectations?
"We certainly set out to produce a film that would excite an audience in the same way that the original series did, and I think that we're already seeing a great level of enthusiasm around it," said Phil Dilanni, a spokesman for BMW of North America, in an e-mail.
Besides the anniversary of the films, "The Escape" launch also coincides with the 100th anniversary of BMW this year.
Nicole Norfleet • 612-673-4495
Twitter: @nicolenorfleet
