In 2001, BMW put Clive Owen, Madonna, and Guy Ritchie in the same campaign. ㅤ This car commercial? Basically a Hollywood film. ㅤ BMW called it The Hire. Eight short films, directed by names like Guy Ritchie and Ang Lee, starring Clive Owen alongside Madonna and Gary Oldman. ㅤ They released it on BMWfilms.com. (YouTube didn't exist yet) ㅤ The fourth film, Star, logged 214,000 unique visitors in a week. On dial-up. By 2005, the series passed 100 million views. ㅤ Here's the part that actually makes this a masterclass in marketing. BMW owned the platform. Over two million viewers traded their email for a free DVD, handing BMW first-party data years before anyone called it that. US sales jumped 12% in 2001 and 17% in 2002. ㅤ BMW didn't need to chase pop culture because they built it themselves, and put the M5 and Z3 inside it. ㅤ The lesson still holds. If you want people to remember your product, tell a story.