The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2020
BMW China's 'ba ma wo' New Year film reunites a family through renamed initials
BMW China recast its Chinese initials as 'ba ma wo' — dad, mum and me — in a Ning Hao film that drew nearly 67 million Weibo views.
BMW China
What it had to solve
In China, BMW's initials carried a mocking nickname, 'bie mo wo' or 'don't touch me', popularised by the film Crazy Stone. For Lunar New Year, a season of family reunions, BMW China wanted to replace that cold reading of its name with a warmer, more meaningful one.
How it works
In China, BMW's initials had picked up a joke nickname: 'bie mo wo', meaning 'don't touch me', made famous in the movie Crazy Stone. Ahead of Lunar New Year 2020, the season of family reunions, BMW China wanted to swap that cold reading for something warmer and more personal.
The answer was a 22-minute film by Ning Hao, the director behind Crazy Stone, told from the viewpoint of a boy in the early 1990s. Proud of the foreign car his father drives and hurt by his parents' divorce, the boy sets out to find the brand a better name, finally writing 'ba ma wo' — dad, mum and me — around the BMW badge on the hood, which pushes his father toward reconciling with his mother.
The film turned a running joke about the initials into the emotional core of a New Year story about a family coming back together. China Film Insider reported it became one of the most-watched auto-brand films of the season on Weibo, with nearly 67 million views by mid-February 2020, and D&AD later kept the work in its awards archive.
Why it lands
- The campaign worked with the existing joke instead of fighting it, so the renaming felt native to Chinese car culture.
- The new reading 'ba ma wo' maps onto the sound of B-M-W, making the pun feel like a discovery rather than a slogan.
- Putting the rename inside a family-reunion story gave the brand meaning on the one occasion of the year when that meaning resonated most.
- Hiring Ning Hao, who popularised the 'don't touch me' joke in Crazy Stone, closed the loop between the old nickname and the new one.
What it did
China Film Insider reported that the film became one of the most-watched auto-brand films of the 2020 holiday season on Weibo, with nearly 67 million views in the weeks after release, and D&AD later archived the work in its awards annual.
What you can take
A mocking nickname is a free brand asset: instead of fighting it, hand it a warmer meaning on the day of the year when that meaning lands hardest.
Since then
D&AD listed the film in its Annual 2022 awards archive, crediting BMW China, director Ning Hao, and agencies Juice Beijing and TBWA\Media Arts Lab Shanghai. Chinese marketing roundups continued to cite the work as an example of Lunar New Year brand storytelling, and BMW returned to the 'ba ma wo' reading in later New Year campaigns.
Sources
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