The dawn of a new era: The BMW Group is dovetailing corporate and BMW brand communication even more closely on the agency side.

Munich. Attention has become a crucial commodity in the digital age. The power of product brands, but also corporate brands, is often the decisive factor in highly competitive markets. Successful companies and brands have a clear profile, communicate creatively and differentiate themselves through positive emotions.

The BMW Group has decided to take an innovative and fundamentally new approach to corporate communication, brand management and brand communication: The company is realigning its corporate and marketing communications for the BMW brand with regard to organisation and content and has formed a customised agency model for this purpose with TheGame Group, which is made up of some of the best and most distinguished agencies in Europe. The shareholders of TheGame Group are the Experience One GmbH and Jung von Matt AG. The agency will work exclusively for the BMW Group for the first few years. With Tim Wagner and Max Lederer as well as and Marc Schumacher, experienced heads could already be won for TheGame Group. The extended operational management team of TheGame Group is currently being established.

The BMW Group expects this to lead to an effective orchestration of the areas of brand campaign, brand experience, brand content, brand protection and public relations. In the future strategically developed and coordinated brand and corporate narratives will be communicated in a way that is appropriate to the target group and channel. In addition, all communication is data-driven and dynamically adapted in real time to audience response and current developments.

The holistically designed communication strategy will ensure that both the company and BMW enter into a dialogue with the respective target groups with the same tonality and approach across all touch points. "The strict separation of corporate and marketing communication into B2B on the one hand and B2C on the other no longer corresponds to the realities of communication in the 21st century. At the digital campfire, the best stories and the most valuable information are what counts" says Maximilian Schöberl, Chief Representative of BMW AG. "One Voice has already been implemented in corporate communications at the BMW Group - now we are entering a new era of collaboration with marketing and brand communications. Especially in a time of rapid change, we are being challenged to develop innovative solutions and not only to lead the pack with our products, but also to develop the most modern and innovative communication infrastructure in the market. We are experiencing a renaissance of public relations.“ 

The BMW Group and its brands are engaged in a constant and increasingly intensive dialogue with a wide range of external and internal target groups and stakeholders: from potential and existing customers to employees, media representatives, investors, legislators, NGOs, Brand Friends, influencers and many more. This makes it all the more important to orchestrate communication, which, despite all the stringency of content, is also able to respond to the specific requirements of target groups and channels. The richness of facets and polyphony thus blend into a harmonious whole.

"Companies increasingly need to become broadcasters of their own brands if they want to stay relevant and address a community. That's why we see “brand” as a media platform," says Jens Thiemer, Senior Vice President Customer and Brand BMW. "In an increasingly fragmented media landscape, power of interpretation and efficient dialogue can only be achieved by joining forces and focusing.” With our approach, we are creating a new standard of modern communication."

TheGame Group is an agency tailor-made for the needs of BMW. It completes the new agency model that BMW established last autumn with the founding THE THE MARCOM ENGINE: While the THE THE MARCOM ENGINE takes on the task of empowering all digital product communication in all European markets, TheGame Group focuses on innovative, data-driven, high-quality creative and strategic work in corporate and brand communication. In future, the aim is to stage the brand internationally across all channels with a maximum of creativity and efficiency.

"If Jung von Matt was a car, it would be a BMW. This quote has been true for us for over twenty years - and today more than ever. We share a passion for what we make, we believe in continuous innovation and we are proud to be shareholders in TheGame Group”, says Peter Figge, member of the board of Jung von Matt AG.

Vincent Bodo Andrin, founder of the Experience One GmbH and ZEITGEIST Group states: "The interplay of marketing and public relations opens up completely new and enormous perspectives for creating genuine brand experiences: by involving all the senses for all relevant target groups. What we are creating replaces many inefficient interfaces and opens up unimagined possibilities."

For the area of corporate communications, TheGame Group will cooperate with the newly founded British offshoot of the Looping Group, Looping Group International Ltd in London. This new company will be responsible for the areas of public relations and social media. "Consistently converging marketing and communications is in our DNA. That is why we are very pleased that TheGame Group approached us," says Michael Karg, Chief Operating Officer of Looping Group International and head of the London office from which BMW's international social media publishing will be managed in future.