[Big brain hole] The BMW H5 advertisement they made lasted 77 minutes and received over 100,000 views, when everyone said that H5 was outdated

The header image of this article is from Kurt Li Wei, the executive creative director of Frontline Network who worked on the BMW M2 H5 advertisement . It may not be used without permission.

Was it Ma Dong bidding farewell to iQiyi and finding a group of talkative young people to work with him on witty remarks, or was it the Forbidden City's playful marketing that suddenly swept social media? Was it the living room that Yu Kunkun created on his mobile phone for the "contemporary Lin Huiyin"s, or was it the ghost song that Mr. Lemonix, the up-host of Bilibili, remixed for Lei Jun... Another year has passed, which "brain hole" can still make you savor the wonderful meaning?

The creativity is not old and the imagination is still great.

The selection of the new year's Huxiu "Most Respected Brain Hole" Innovation Award has started. This year, we not only want you to see the final form of the "brain hole" candidate products, but also want to explore the entire process of a "brain hole" product from creativity to realization by visiting the creative team.

A series of reports on “brain hole” candidate products will be published one after another. Today’s recommended “brain hole” is – BMW “This video has been quickly deleted by BMW” H5.

The reading volume exceeded 100,000 in 77 minutes. This was the result achieved by BMW's "This news has been quickly deleted by BMW" H5 advertisement on WeChat Moments on the evening of April 13 this year. At that time, many people believed that the H5 craze had passed and people were tired of countless H5s.

Even though four months have passed, when people talk about "BMW's H5 advertisement", many people still nod and say "Oh, I remember that." Therefore, when reviewing the impressive marketing ideas from the end of last year to the beginning of this year, this case cannot be avoided.

It used a not-so-new form of communication, appeared at the same time as Kobe Bryant ’s retirement, and “there was not a penny spent on promotion”. How was the idea of ​​letting a car break out of the circle of friends and rush into different life scenarios generated and realized?

Huxiu found the team that worked on this H5, Frontline Network, and had a quick Q&A session with Operations Director Zhang Xiaolei and Executive Creative Director Li Wei about this idea:

Kurt Li Wei – Executive Creative Director of Frontline Network

Zhang Xiaolei – Frontline Network Operations Director

1. Under what circumstances and at what time did this idea first come about?

We were working on a year-round project for BMW, but the client only formally approached us for a meeting one and a half months before (this case) went online. At that time, the customer wanted a very unexpected solution, combined with the M2 model that was being promoted, which was relatively young, had personality, and a distinct feeling.

The concept of M2 is: to be at the cutting edge. We just wonder what it feels like to be able to navigate with ease in life or in social media circles of friends? At first, some preliminary ideas were proposed, such as letting the car drift in the circle of friends. I will think about how to play it in terms of concept, expression and execution later.

It took about two weeks from the time I first proposed the idea to the client to the time I started working on it. In many ways, it might have taken longer, as I spent the last week constantly adjusting details and polishing the project.

2. Why do you think from this perspective? What other different ideas did you have at that time?

At that time, we took into account that the H5 format is spread countless times on the WeChat platform every year, so how can we make it stand out and be eye-catching? We just want to make some changes to the most ordinary forms and create some impact in sparse and ordinary scenes.

At the beginning, two or three directions were proposed. This is one of them. As for the other two, I have forgotten them for a long time. The client found this direction very interesting, so we discussed it with a team of 3 or 5 people in our project. We expanded the scenarios from Moments to video sites, music apps and other scenarios that are most familiar to us in our current lives, and presented different display methods under these different Internet application scenarios.

The footage of the car running on the road was probably original footage from global sources, but how to use it was something we carefully considered later. For each scene, we would work with the client to see how to match the rhythm and at what point in time to create a sudden sense of surprise. The title of the article was also decided before the final release.

This title was based on a hot topic in the communication circle at the time. Tencent particularly emphasized the issue of public account forwarding at that time, and that users should not be lured to forward and share, etc. Therefore, we chose this title at the last minute before publishing it, and designed the picture of the (WeChat article) to be an exclamation mark to let it follow this hot topic.

3. During this process, from conception to execution, were there any difficulties or major challenges you encountered?

First of all, this seems to be a very simple experience, and it gives an unexpected feeling on the mobile phone. However, there are still many small challenges and details to be solved in many details, including some art or execution levels.

Usually people use H5 to make an animation, but this H5 has not only animation but also video, some special effects for post-video, 3D rendering, and video editing, so this H5 itself is not a completely new thing, but a combination of many old elements in new ways.

Using this method, we face these problems: we want it to be smooth, but we also want it not to take too long, because people don’t have that much patience. During this process, we hope that there will be constant details to stimulate users, so we did a lot of debugging in terms of the balance between the overall file size, the alignment of sound and video, loading time, server response time, stress testing, etc.

The entire debugging process took about 3-5 working days, which was relatively sufficient.

4. Have you seen any advertising work recently that you think can be described as "imaginative"?

I think the H5 advertisement titled "Travel through the Forbidden City to See You" produced by the Forbidden City is pretty good. The Palace Museum’s account and the marketing it does are quite interesting.

Another one is “Our Spiritual Corner” made by W Company for Douban. I think it has very accurate insights and is very touching. It will resonate with its target group and is a work that truly wins by relying on creative advertising concepts.

5. Do you think H5 will still be the trend in marketing and advertising creativity this year?

In fact, wasn’t there this sound before? Some people said that H5 was no longer popular, but when M2 H5 came out, many people thought that H5 was popular again. I personally think that H5 is just a form of expression. It ultimately depends on the creative content itself to apply this form. How to make it interesting so as to stimulate consumers and netizens is not a problem of the form itself.

We still need to use existing creativity to think of a suitable form. Some customers will ask: make an H5 for me, or something like that. When dealing with this kind of thing, we will definitely have to go back to the starting point to look at it again, because when doing this, we need to see what message I want to convey and how to make it interesting.

6. Do you think you are an interesting person? How do you get through the time when you are stuck with ideas?

I find myself quite boring. But I am curious about a lot of things and I feel a sense of novelty. I like this today and that tomorrow, but after two days I suddenly forget about it and I like something else. (-Are you talking about girls?-You can understand it that way, haha.)

Being interesting cannot be maintained. You have to be curious about the world to be interesting. It is something in your bones. There is a book I recommend called "What If".

In fact, I feel very worried when I am running out of ideas, so I listen to rock music, smoke, drink, and perm my hair, haha.

Attached is BMW's "This video has been quickly deleted by BMW" H5 project main participants: Frontline Network CEO Felix Teng Yilin, Executive Creative Director Kurt Li Wei, Creative Director Ken Wu Jin, Operations Director Benjamin Zhang Xiaolei, Planning Director Creasy Xie Wenqi, Deputy Account Director Ava Ding Yu, Account Manager Joey Guan Dongfeng.