While the world changes dramatically and customers want to experience brands in new ways, some key branding principles remain true. One is that strong brands are consistent – giving customers reliable signals helping us make choices they feel proud of.

In 1976, Mercedes Benz was the market leader in prestige cars. BMW, on the other hand, was lagging behind, thanks to an uncoordinated application of the brand and a weak dealer network. A new CEO brought a new vision and inspiring ambition to the company – to become the number one premium brand in the market.

Through our partnership with BMW over four decades we have built the brand together, positioning it to command a premium market and make it the leader it is today. More than 40 years later, we have built brand platforms that create shared experiences with customers. We have unified the brand’s experience bringing to life the core pillars of outstanding engineering, ambitious goals and exclusivity into a flexible, modular system that ensures consistent, global experience across every touchpoint. After evaluating which interactions and experiences would get it closer to its goal, we also reimagined the dealership experience from the customers’ perspective. Our economics team sized the opportunity around sponsorships of premium world experiences, like yachting, making the case that these would significantly increase brand value.

BMW made a commitment to being the most iconic prestige auto brand, and has spent 40 years making incremental moves to build that iconic positioning, through customer experiences and relationships worldwide. The results speak for themselves: in 2018, the BMW brand is ranked 13th on the planet. BMW’s brand valuation has risen from $12.9 billion in 2000 to $41 billion in 2018.