THE OCEANS PROJECT - A BMW LEGACY BRANDING INITIATIVE
BMW wasn’t looking for a campaign.
They were looking for a direction - something that could bend internal culture, future products, and public perception.
This is the work we named Legacy Branding: brand mythos for the next era, not the next quarter.
My role was to define the visual consciousness of that future.
The assignment lived at the edge of practicality and belief:
take oceans - a subject exhausted by activism, greenwashing, and PR fatigue - and make it feel primordial again.
Not a message.
A mandate.
We went deep into the science with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Parley for the Oceans: filtration systems, algae-based polymers, upcycled maritime plastics, circular design frameworks. The information was solid. But information never changes a company.
Only vision does.
So I went hunting for a symbol powerful enough to carry the entire emotional load: a new totem for BMW’s relationship with nature.
I found it in the Andaman Sea, where elephants - creatures of immense gravity - swim through open water with grace that feels mythic. Something not meant for the ocean, belonging there completely.
That image became our anchor:
technology moving in harmony with nature, not against it.
Legacy becoming weightless.
The 20-second film and visual direction weren’t ‘content pieces.’
They were the emotional scaffolding for BMW’s emerging ocean initiatives - from circular materials to maritime innovation to global partnerships like The Ocean Cleanup.
This wasn’t branding. This was setting a course.
(INTRO)