Insight: how BMW is reinventing its design and going upmarket

“First, expanding at the top end of our range is something that we’ve been wanting to do for a while. We believe that there’s room to do so – actually our customers are asking for more products at the top end – and almost at the same time as we were plotting new cars like the 8 Series and the X7, we realised that when we came to 2018, we would hit a wave of new products, including the Z4 and a couple of other cars. 

“In fact, six or seven new BMWs will be rolled out in the next year-and-a-half or so. I’ve been with this company a while and we’ve done a lot of product in the past, but I would say that we’ve never done so many new cars for one particular brand in such a short period of time.” 

With such a rich array of new models under development, the company reckoned that this was “an opportunity, because if you can roll six cars in one-and-a-half years, you can pretty much transform the brand,” says van Hooydonk. “We also felt that it was the right time because we felt quite happy with the design up until now. But you have to keep moving. You don’t want to become a sitting duck.” 

Not allowing BMW to become a sitting duck is also a motivation for BMW’s product management and brand chief Hildegard Wortmann. “I think it’s important when you have such a strong brand that you keep it fresh all the time, that you keep it original, that you keep it on the edge,” she says. To that end, Wortmann, a brand expert with experience at both Unilever and Calvin Klein before she joined BMW in 1998, has overseen a three-pronged reorientation of the way BMW presents itself to the world. And with her contribution to the product development process, she has been involved with the substance of the new cars too. 

Those three prongs are the mainstream BMWs, the i-brand cars and the newly designated luxury Bayerische Motoren Werke models. 

BMW enthusiasts might notice that people now appear in some of the company’s ads, and that the tone of its messaging, which cuts across social media as well, alters according to the model. Wortmann cites “the latest [advertising] campaign on the 1 Series – it’s completely digital, dealing with the topic of drones, doing competitions and installations with drones. This freshening up is keeping the brand up to date, making it modern. The challenge is to do different interpretations with each and every car, depending on the different segments, and the different target audiences.”

With the i models, she adds, “you’ll see a much fresher approach with more digital, more multimedia and more emotion. It’s a strong statement of attitude.” BMW’s luxury models – the existing 7 Series, and the forthcoming X7 and 8 Series Coupeà – will be represented using a strategy borrowed from the fashion world, “by going back to our roots and using the full name, like Alexander McQueen”, says Wortmann. The McQueen fashion house and others spell the brand’s name out for its high-end lines, and use initials for the more affordable products.

The visual character of the cars themselves will change too, says van Hooydonk, for “this new chapter in our form language. Pretty quickly, we came to the conclusion that it should be something that is cleaner, where we are trying to achieve a lot with fewer elements, and fewer lines. 

“But the lines that we do have should be crisper, sharper and more precise. We believe that this will fit very well with these new top-end products. When you reduce the form language, the details matter more. In the luxury segment, where often more is more, we are offering luxury in a very modern way.” 

The new design language isn’t only about simplifying and refining shapes. BMW is keen to develop more individual identities within its range, as those striking new grilles indicate. “In the next vehicle generation, we want to separate each and every model. They have very different types of competitors that could be from totally different brands. The industry has changed in that sense,” says van Hooydonk. 

“For the luxury cars, it is always a good idea to separate them from the next car up – that’s something that we will do. If you look at the 8 Series, I believe it deserves that name. Like the previous 8 Series, it’s a car that’s not a saloon-derived coupeÃ.” 

With a new design language under development and that wave of new models for 2018, van Hooydonk and the marketing team reckoned that BMW should also reassess its corporate identity. That process was led by Wortmann, who says: “You saw the first outing at the Frankfurt notor show with the fully written ‘Bayerische Motoren Werke’ in the black and white logo, at least in print. We feel that it’s more elegant and sophisticated. It fits with what we are trying to do with the form language.” 

As might be expected, the design team has adopted a new interior approach too, “for the same reasons – there too we could clean up”, says van Hooydonk. “Cars will become more intelligent and that’s beginning to happen now. It means you have to tell the car less what it needs to do and what you want from it. So you will need fewer buttons. 

“The buttons that we do still have are neatly grouped in a couple of islands in the centre console or in the dashboard in the Z4, 8 Series and X7 concept cars. The cockpits are going to go towards digital and always include a head-up display, and the way you operate the vehicle will then become a mix between touch, some hard keys and voice control.”