Brand My BMW - A Social Media Experiment

Ok, you've got yourself a pristine BMW 745i -- a pretty sweet ride -- and it's your baby and pride and joy.  You're young and you work for a progressive digital media company. You want to show off your ride so what do you do?

You cover the damn thing in bumper stickers.

WTF?? You say?

Yes, you read that right -- bumper stickers - 200 of them in fact. Crazy I know.  Why the hell would anyone deface such a sweet piece of machinery? It's all in the name of proving a point.

Allen Hartwig is the Business Development Director at Pondry.com a web development and online strategy company located just north of Seattle in Mount Vernon, WA.  He's engaging in a little social media experiment -- he wants to prove that brands can effectively be seen by thousands of people with a very little outlay in cash.

So for just a few dollars (the 1st company in line pays $5, the 200th company pays $1000) your company get get placement not only on a beautiful silver BMW 745i, but in the social media world where word of mouth is king.

I shot Allen and his BMW at Alki Beach last week.  This is the first image of several that Allen will be incorporating into the BrandMyBMW campaign.  We decided to go for something a little dark and edgy,  shooting with emphasis on the stickers as if it were an ad for the car itself.

The shot uses three lights -- a White Lightning X3200 into a Paul C Buff medium softbox placed camera left to provide the main light to the back end of the car.  The light was placed high and angled down to avoid as much specular reflection as possible.  The second light is an Alien Bees ABR800 Ring Flash placed camera right to illuminate the side panel of the car.  And finally a White Lightnin X1600 into a Paul C. Buff 47" octabox on axis used to illuminate Allen and the top rear quarter panel of the car.  Photoshop was used for tonality and some additional fill light.

If you're interested in Allen's project, check out his website BrandMyBMW.com or follow him on Twitter at @brandmybmw.

If you have a Social Media Project you'd like me to photograph, please feel free to email me to discuss the details.