Despite nurturing a successful and loyal male customer base, BMW weren’t engaging enough women. Years of male-focused communications meant they were missing out on a powerful, untapped audience with huge buying power.

And these engagement challenges were having a knock-on effect on business results, with women 37.8% more likely to choose an Audi than a BMW, and 38.3% less likely to choose a BMW than a man.

In an increasingly competitive, volatile industry, the time was right to tackle this issue—but simply 'tweaking’ our approach to resonate with our female audience was not enough, BMW had to find a way to challenge the deep-set misconceptions of their brand among an affluent, female audience and build a meaningful, emotional connection with them.

Our insight revealed that the key metrics to shift were: positive impression, perception of innovation and consideration—a direct driver of sales.

The result was a fully integrated, year-long partnership that placed BMW front and centre of real, meaningful conversations around issues that mattered to our audience.

Together with Vogue, we created rich, engaging content across BMW’s four key brand purpose driven pillars: sustainability, diversity and inclusion, innovation in design, and the next generation.

Through a bespoke video series, ‘The Extra Mile…’, where Vogue’s own Editor-in-Chief Edward Enninful interviewed Tracey, Simone Rocha and Lily Cole, BMW simultaneously showcased their all-electric range and became an integral part of powerful conversations with inspiring cultural leaders.

This was amplified via a carefully curated ecosystem of print, social and digital content, aligning BMW with the issues our audience really cared about in a truly integrated way.

Over our 12-month partnership, we remained laser focused on objectives, constantly revisiting our consistency, connection and change framework to ensure that at every moment, the content was delivering against the brief.

It sounds ambitious, but we set to fundamentally change the perception of BMW among an affluent female audience. And by defining the right insight, selecting the right partner, and maintaining a consistent and powerful narrative throughout, we exceeded every target set.

• Our partner selection was validated – 73% agreed Vogue was a good fit

• It stood out – 63% agreed it was attention grabbing

• It reached 7 million people, with our video series viewed by 1.7million

• And it changed perceptions, driving a 143% increase in women thinking BMW's brand messaging fairly represents them

But most importantly, it delivered against objectives:

• Impression – 9% increase in positive impression scores

• Innovation – 12% uplift in innovation scores for pre vs. post

• Consideration - 21% uplift in consideration for pre vs. post