The BMW M Drive Tour is a series of premium events allowing current and prospective BMW customers to drive the complete portfolio of BMW's signature M vehicles around Europe's iconic race tracks. In doing so, they fully discover the capabilities of the BMW M brand.
BMW were keen to explore how they could enhance the experience and amplify overall emotional engagement to drive affinity. As a result, BMW and ZeroLight collaborated on a series of fully connected, customer-centric digital experiences delivered pre, during, and post event.
"The BMW M Drive Tour is one of the spectacles on the BMW calendar, providing the most extravagant fleet of BMW M cars to our best customers in the CSEU region for an exhilarating driving experience"
Florian Stiller, Head of Event and Sportmarketing BMW Group Central and Southeastern Europe.
Pre-Event Online Experience
BMW M customers were invited to an online portal where they could configure their car online using an interactive video configurator before the event. This allowed visitors to select individual paint, wheel, and interior options or choose from several pre-sets, before saving their preferences.
Event Virtual Reality & 4k Experience
During the event, customers could load their online configuration and explore it through two mediums: virtual reality (VR) and 4k. Each experience was available throughout the event, allowing anyone to move freely between the actual race track and the digital world.
VR enabled delegates to explore and refine their choices on a 1:1 scale. Using the newly-released HTC Vive Pro, customers could see their BMW M5 on the famous Le Mans race track. Delivered as a series of six scenes, the experience enabled users to cycle between paint options, open the boot, put on a race helmet, change the alloys, and sit inside the digital vehicle.
Using a real BMW M5 car seat which was mapped to the virtual world, users could open the front passenger door, climb inside their car, and configure the interior. Once finished, they were transported to the driver's side, where they could interact with a number of features, including the steering wheel, horn, rear-view mirror, gear stick, and cabin storage compartments. To finish the experience, a start button appeared which revved the engine before moving the car down the track when the starting lights turned green.
"Enhancing and enriching a real product experience through digital technologies such as VR or AR, provided by strong partners like ZeroLight, will become more and more essential to state of the art experiential marketing."
Florian Stiller, Head of Event and Sportmarketing BMW Group Central and Southeastern Europe.
The 4k experience provided an Ultra HD representation of each customer's individual BMW M5. Not only did this provide further customisation, but also allowed each guest to watch their car complete a lap around Le Mans in real-time, the 4k experience delivered several cinematic sequences to showcase each user's final creation in unprecedented detail.
Post Event Microsite
After the event, each customer received a personalised microsite that featured their unique customisations. This included a full 360⁰ turntable of their car, enabling them to see it from all angles. Auto-generated assets including beauty shots, the Le Mans driving scene, and an event roundup video were included and were directly sharable to social networks. This provided each individual customer with a directly relevant post-event follow up.
A Unified Experience
The series of connected digital experiences around the BMW M Drive Tour drives engagement through relevance, ensuring every interaction with each BMW M customer is unique. BMW's signature tour therefore communicates with each customer as an individual, driving brand affinity through ongoing 1:1 relationships.
"The BMW M Drive Tour demonstrates the significant impact connected experiences have on brand engagement, ensuring customers are involved both earlier and later in the event lifecycle."
Michael Minich, Director of Business Development, ZeroLight
London Tech Week
The VR and 4k experiences were made available to the wider public for the first time during London Tech Week's TechXLR8 conference. Delegates from across the tech industry could explore and define their digital BMW M5 through both mediums.
The public demonstration was accompanied by a collaborative presentation by BMW and ZeroLight which discussed the M Drive Tour and the significance of digital experiences in driving engagement and brand affinity amongst the BMW M target segment.
