Key Impacts
- Savings of 60% by extending digitized downloads across Akamai Platform
- Delivering 200 TB of total data (14million film views) during first series
- Global reach enables BMW to market short films to global audience
- Concurrent, high-quality streams (70% accessed at rates of 300kps)
- Reduced infrastructure planning
"The Hire" Internet film series, available at www.bmwfilms.com, received international acclaim when it premiered in 2001 with original short films directed by some of Hollywood’s most noted directors. Considered the most successful integrated marketing campaign in the history of the Internet, the series, developed by BMW of North America, successfully leveraged the Web along with traditional media to deliver a truly rich viewing experience to a broad audience. In planning to expand the series to support the launch of the 2003 Z4 Roadster, BMW needed to ensure that the significant investment in creating and marketing the Web-based series wouldn’t be compromised by performance or availability issues.
Akamai EdgeSuite met all of BMW’s criteria for an efficient streaming delivery solution—offering the benefits of optimal performance, unmatched digital quality, and reduced infrastructure planning. In addition, since BMW fully expected end-user interest to originate from international locations, EdgeSuite’s ability to scale dynamically to meet unforeseen user demands regardless of location proved critical. And thanks to Akamai’s site and visitor monitoring tools, BMW was able to assess the effectiveness of its campaign in near real time, driving understanding of both campaign effectiveness and user preferences and behaviors. The result? A happy ending to a ground-breaking integrated marketing campaign.
"Every solution that Akamai has provided for us has proved to be more impactful, more economically sound, and has created a better user experience than had we tried to rely solely on developing our own infrastructure."
—Robbie Cohen, Technical Program Manager, BMW of North America
