For the first time in 23 years, BMW Motorrad launched a Cruiser motorcycle – the R 18. This represented BMW’s entrance into a market segment heavily dominated by the cruising giant Harley Davidson and its cult-like following.

The brief aimed to celebrate the R 18’s origin story: its design and engineering cues mirrored some of BMW Motorrad’s earliest R models from the 1900’s. Most importantly, the content needed to tell a uniquely American story to establish BMW’s cruiser credibility in this Harley-dominated market and infiltrate the cultural conversation within the biking community, and beyond.

In the wake of the summer of 2020, we gave two African American BMW Motorrad riders new R 18’s and asked them where they’d travel to honor their heritage. One of the riders is the Vice President of a local Buffalo Soldiers Motorcycle Club chapter, and the other is a Probationary member. They chose to use the ride as part of the Probie’s indoctrination into the MC. Their “Heritage Road” destination: the West Point Military Academy, where the original Buffalo Soldiers (America’s first All-Black Peacetime Regiments from 1866) taught horsemanship skills to West Point Cadets. In preparation for, and during the ride, we learned about the riders’ individual stories, as well as the motorcycle club’s mission to be a bridge between law enforcement agencies and the African American community. All with beautiful riding footage, BMW Motorrad’s own brand heritage story, and the R 18’s origin seamlessly woven.

The strategy for BMW Motorrad’s Heritage Road campaign was twofold. First, establish credibility by leaning into the R 18’s origin story, celebrating the motorcycle’s design and engineering roots, which track back to BMW’s earliest R models from the 1900’s. Second, create culturally relevant long-form content over an extended period of time to engage the motorcycling community, and infiltrate a market segment dominated by domestic brands and their loyal fanbase.

With a slim, $100K production budget and $50,000 media dollars, our campaign lived on BMW Motorrad USA’s Instagram and Facebook channels and extended into their website following the release of all five episodes on IGTV. The brand’s organic Facebook and Instagram feeds hosted short-form trailers, posts, and stories. As the campaign evolved and fans began joining, user-generated content was also featured on Instagram.

The first campaign piece was posted 10/15/20, with the final episode launching 11/16/20.

Our content reached over 7M people with a limited budget of only $50,000 for media spend. The series met the BMW Motorrad USA lifetime benchmark VCR of 37% for long-form content, and stoked conversation on the platform amongst the riding community, and beyond.