BMW to build on success of Shorties competition

First held last year, the Shorties series has become known as a gateway for aspiring young directors. With a grand prize of RM 75,000 (US$23,000) to help produce the winning entry, the competition had seen 62 entries narrowed to 10 finalists before public voting for the winner closed this month.

“The response to the inaugural BMW Shorties was far beyond our expectations,” said Vijayaratnam Tharumartnam, BMW Group Malaysia’s press and corporate affairs manager. “We received a lot of high quality films and more importantly created a high level of awareness for these films both locally and abroad. Last year, the traffic on our website to watch the finalists was so heavy that we were forced to increase the site’s bandwidth to prevent it from crashing,” he added.

Wolfgang Schlimme, managing director of BMW Malaysia, said: “To date, our website has received 3,251 visitors from 34 countries including the United States, Germany, Australia, Russia, Canada and Norway.”
The website, developed by Slipknot, sister agency of Malaysian digital hot shop Arachnid, featured viral YouTube content, social media tools and an e-direct marketing campaign.

Leow Yuet Mee, strategic planner at Slipknot, said: “Budget constraints meant that we had to target a new breed of indie filmmaker. Besides traditional PR, the internet is the only medium employed to ferret out the right audience, drive awareness, buzz and participation without online ads, channel sponsorships or other forms of media spend.”

“The key strategy is to drive word-of-mouth and buzz in social media.” Freelance artist, Nazim Mohammed Esa, won the grand prize with his surrealist love story, For the Love of Drowning while English lecturer Mahaletchumi Tavamany and film student Edmund Yeo received honourable mentions for their entries Sing in the Rain and Chicken Rice Mystery.

Last year’s winner, Abdullah Zahir, will see his production, Teddy and I, travel to the Rotterdam International Festival next year.

In 2000, BMW engaged renowned directors including John Frankenheimer, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-Wai, Guy Ritchie, and Alejandro González Iñárritu, to shoot a series of short films which has become a landmark case study in how brands can flourish online.