BMW And French Laundry Offer Guests An Elevated Experience

BMW has announced a partnership with Chef Thomas Keller – a BMW driver and owner of the French Laundry and Per Se restaurants – as part of a broader effort to create word-of-mouth conversation for each brand – ultimately further strengthening their image, reach and appeal via a unique, elevated experience. To that end, BMW will provide an ActiveHybrid 7 sedan – a $100K model – for select customers as part of French Laundry’s concierge service. In addition, the brands will continue to explore other possibilities, including holding cooking events that would appeal to fans of BMW and Keller’s work.

By marketing to customers with gourmet tastes, BMW can benefit from reaching potential new (and hopefully not mostly current) customers at the Michelin 3-star rated California restaurant, while French Laundry can ultimately benefit from the increased perception of offering guests an ‘elevated experience’.  BMW would specifically like to beat Lexus to become the top-selling luxury brand in the U.S. in 2012.

While this isn’t the first time an auto brand partnered with customers of ‘elevated’ experiences or tastes in order to more tightly align with customers of shared preferences and tastes – for instance, W Hotels offer the ‘Acura Experience’ – it is a very carefully selected and high-visibility partnership among two brands with customers that likely share some similar tastes and interests. The question remains, whether any more customers will visit French Laundry as a result of this experience, or whether French Laundry’s patrons will represent a new, potential (vs. existing) customer for BMW. Regardless, it is a great way for a large, Global brand like BMW to act and feel ‘smaller’ by tapping into a very local (but very successful and internally recognized) experience like that of French Laundry.

French Laundry

BMW

[via Bloomberg]