We were back to the media visit grind to day. BMW welcomed us to their offices to give us a short presentation about their new, purely electric cars. The project i series brand manager, Manuel Sattig, was extremely knowledgeable and passionate about BMW and this new electric car concept. The advertising and PR majors definitely benefited from this visit as it was mostly marketing related and of interest to all of us.
After learning about this very innovative and environmentally friendly car, we were treated to a delicious lunch where we were able to talk to two of the representatives one-on-one. Martin and Stefan were their names and they were both quite impressive people. Martin was a mere 23 years old and just graduated from University. It was very cool to see someone so young interning at such a well-established and serious company. Stefan was slightly older and worked his way up through BMW starting as a driver and ending up where he is now as a communications person for Asia and the South Pacific. In college, he started with Mandarin studies, which helps him daily in his career.
Along with being quite successful, we found out in a humorous turn of events that Stefan was also a little bit arachnophobia. He found a little spider crawling on him and freaked out. I’m talking freaked out the way I freak out when I see a spider, screams and all. It was hilarious and endlessly endearing coming from such a pulled together businessman.
After lunch we toured the BMW Welt and Museum and were given little model i8s as souvenirs to remember our trip by. The museum was full of old classic cars and motorcycles as well as new concepts. Being that I am not very interested in cars, I had very little knowledge of the history of BMW so that was cool to see.
The main takeaway I got from BMW was definitely inspiration for my future line of work. We asked Stefan at lunch why it was necessary for a car to be able to go from 0 to 60 in 4 seconds and he had the most eloquent and passionate explanation. He explained that BMW is an emotion and is driven by the allure of the sport of driving. He said cars don’t need to be able to accelerate that fast, but BMWs are marketed that way because they are made to be driven for sport, not necessarily practicality per se. His quick response and knowledge of the brand identity of his company is something I hope I can emulate in my future career. BMW seemed very genuine, which surprised me a lot. Every employee seemed to back the brand and the company fully and honestly, which I found to be quite striking.
Feeling inspired,
Michelle
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