The ultra-luxury shopper has no time for marketing messages, making them a lucrative but extremely hard market to reach. To promote it new luxury X7 and i8 models, BMW, FCB and Media Experts found an unexpected way to connect with this elusive audience: through real estate.

Since luxury begets luxury, the carmaker reached high net worth drivers (without negatively impacting its cost-per-lead) by turning the driveways of multimillion-dollar homes into showrooms for BMW.

With “Stage Your Driveway,” FCB made BMW’s lineup an unexpected and welcome part of the home-buying journey by partnering with high-end real estate agency Heaps Estrin and embedding cars in its listings. When a home-for-sale was photographed, the driveway was staged with a brand new X7 or i8. When homebuyers visited online real estate listings and flipped through the photo gallery, they found a BMW in every exterior shot, turning a well-known part of the house buying process – the image carousel – into a BMW ad.

Open houses also included the brand’s car in front of the house, turning driveways into showrooms. Neighbours in these tony ‘hoods were also geo-targeted with neighbourhood-specific ads to bring attention to the driveways. Anyone who clicked on one of the ads or inquired about the vehicle at an open house was contacted by a BMW dealer.

The ultra-low cost effort allowed BMW to reach its target when they weren’t even looking for a new set of wheels. It also saw the cost-per-lead for this class of vehicles lower by 56% and added a new pool of 37,000 prospective buyers.