BMW sez: bureaucracy sucks

The latest BMW ad campaign has very little to do with cars and focuses instead on the corporate values of the Bayerische Motoren Werke.

One version of it says:

We say no to:

Compromise
Complacency
Bureaucracy
Red tape
Lowest common denominators
Middle managemet
Second guessing
Herd mentality

So we can say yes to good ideas.

BMW fights bureaucracy. This is cool. Why is it cool?

1: Bureaucracy kills happiness at work
Bureaucracy saps people’s energy and motivation. If you don’t believe me, read Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon Mackenzie. It’s an excellent book about how to thrive in organizitions plagued by red tape.

2: Branding through good corporate identity rules
BMW are choosing to brand themselves not through their products or technology but through how they run their business.

3: Branding that matches products rules
This campaing works only because the corporate identity they are expressing happens to match the products. BMW’s vehicles (I’m the proud owner of one myself) are innovative and exciting matching the (mildly) revolutionary message of the ads.

It’s great to see companies making a stand against bureaucracy and It’s even better to see companies making bold, positive identities and standing by them.

It just struck me though: Is anyone else surprised to see such an anti-authoritarian message… from a German company :o)

Comments

10 responses to “BMW sez: bureaucracy sucks”

May 19, 2006

Michael Wagner

Alex, love this post. Where did you get the picture!

And this is the perfect hope generating post for a Friday – if Germans can loosen up their bureaucracy, there is hope for all of us! Smile.

Thanks for enlarging the conversation – much appreciated on this side of the pond.
May 19, 2006

Lars Kolind

Super information. In my new book The Second Cycle – Winning the War against Bureaucracy, (see http://www.thesecondcycle.com, also available in Danish, see http://www.kolindkuren.dk) I highlight the US auto industry as the prototype of an industry that needs to get out of the bureaucracy trap. The US auto industry is complacent, lacks a clear meaning, lacks partnership with employees, builds on a rigid hierarchical organizational structure and lacks value-based leadership. Loosers are customers, employees, subsuppliers, distributors and indeed shareholders. Did you know that the hearing aid company Oticon that I turned around from bankruptcy, now has a market capitalization of about one third of General Motors Corporation?
May 19, 2006

Kolind Kuren » Blog-arkiv » BMW g

[…] Du kan l
May 19, 2006

Alexander Kjerulf

Mike, I figured this would be right up your alley :o) I get almost all my pictures from stock.xchng at http://www.sxc.hu. They have lots of great pictures and most of them are free!!!

And thanks for your comment Lars. I just bought your book today and am a third of the way through it already. It rocks!

The american auto industry has definitely lost it’s way. In your book your write about the necessity for a partnership between management and employees. For an excellent example of how GM fails to do this, read Life on the Line by Solange deSantis (review here: https://positivesharing.com/2005/07/book-review-life-on-the-line).

She’s a journalist who worked undercover in a GM van plant for 18 months and saw first hand how the creativity, ideas and energy of the employees was consistently ignored and wasted.

The fact that Oticon is approaching GM in value is a testament to the fact that innovation beats bureaucracy – which is precisely the point of your book.
May 23, 2006

Positive Sharing » Happy At Work at IKEA

[…] Previously: BMW brand themselves againt bureaucracy. […]
May 5, 2009

Your Company Should Not Use Social Media. Ever. | Professional Blog Service

[…] You have to deal with Legal or Regulatory Compliance issues. Ochman may have said it, but it bears repeating. A lot. I’ve had to deal with Legal departments in the past, and at best, they’re mild annoyances. But when they feel they need to actually dictate the marketing message, they become a roadblock to everything. That’s when the Marketing Department either needs to turn control of marketing to Legal, or ask for the rights to edit and rewrite all legal briefs. Then point them to Alexander Kjerulf’s post about BMW’s latest ads about how bureaucracy sucks. […]
July 21, 2011

Bureaucracy | Game Glist

[…] Bureaucracy positivesharing.com […]
October 7, 2011

Bunny

BMW hates bureaucracy so much that they have decided to leave Argentina than try to deal with the red tape and trade restrictions here.
June 1, 2012

walt

I work with BMW and it is full of red tape, bureaucracy, and useless and overpaid middle managers. Their mission statement is just words.
May 6, 2013

Bureaucratic Management | BMW Trade Show

[…] 3)https://positivesharing.com/2006/05/bmw-sez-bureaucracy-sucks/ […]