In one of the most brilliant pieces of automotive print advertising I’ve seen in years, BMW has begun a campaign based around the word “No”. Here’s how the two page ad is laid out:

First page:

>“No”.

Second page:

>“The ability to say no to compromise is a rare thing these days. Many companies would like to be able to say it, but so few have the autonomy to actually do it. As an independent company, BMW can say no. No, we will not compromise our ideas. No, we will not do it the way everyone else does it. No, we will not factor designs down to the lowest common denominator. No, we will not sell out to a parent company who will meddle in our affairs and ask us to subject our cars to mass market vanilla-ism.

>Because we can say no to compromise, we can say yes to other things – such as building our vehicles with 50/50 weight distribution for superior handling and control, despite the fact that it costs more to build them that way. It’s thousands of little things like this that separates BMW from other car companies. By maintaining our autonomy and ability to say no, we can make sure great ideas live on to become ultimate driving machines.”

Simply put, they nailed it. The above copy is what the BMW soul is suppose to be about. And to some degree the MINI’s soul has become.

There are also a few TV commercials on air with the same message but none are quite as dramatic as that two-page print spread.