Munich, Germany
Mission Title: Strange Weather in BMW Land – BMW Welt
Mission Date: 20-06-2008
SCRIPT
- Visit the BMW Welt.
- Highlight the building's architectural features taking both wide shots and closer ones, paying attention to the relationship between the Olympic park the BMW structures, including the tower and the exterior museum.
- Enter the BMW Welt and ask some information about its services and facilities to someone who works there. Ask them what role does the structure play in tourism.
- Wander around the building, record the worshipping atmosphere and the people. Who is visiting? Interview someone and ask them why do they go there and whether they own a BMW or not. If not, ask them how come they got interested in BMWs.
- Concentrate on the tactics, informational, architectural, and advertorial, that BMW uses to get you to buy in to their imaginary.
- Do you find the corporately branded lifestyle satisfying or creepy?
- Be sure to frame your mission as a story. Give it a narrative. Be creative in your approach.
TRAVEL BAG
How does a brand theme park attempt to sell you your identity?
Certain brands have a way of attempting to dominate your whole life. When you buy the product, you buy the imaginary attached to it. Companies use more vivid imagery to try and convince you that their product, yes, theirs, can fulfill all the emptiness of your life with the simplicity of a swipe of your credit card. Sometimes this life fulfilling sales pitch, bloats and then explodes into something of monumentally scarry proportions. Disneyland was probably the first major brand themepark, but even this corporate experiment (though this might have changed) was not totally grounded in merely selling you things. They at least had the good taste to pretend it was about fun.
The BMW brand has taken its corporate mission well beyond the next level in opening the BMW Welt, 100 million dollar deconstructivist giant, sitting in the Olympic park with glass tornado screwing its way inside the Earth and hopefully into your pockets. It houses a museum for visitors to drool over the status symbols of the past, a truly creepy BMW Junior campus for kids (get 'em while they’re young), and of course, a place to purchase your very own Beamer.
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