1. CONTEXT - A BRAND BUILT ON EARTH FACING A FUTURE OFF WORLD

BMW’s board in Munich was exploring long-horizon, high-concept directions for the brand: not 2025, not 2030, but legacy.
What comes after “The Ultimate Driving Machine” in a world reshaped by:
– climate displacement
– new mobility paradigms
– space exploration
– shifting cultural values around engineering and mastery?

A BMW-aligned partner, Indelible Planet, was tasked with proposing bold trajectories.
I was brought in to lead the visual and conceptual articulation of these futures - specifically the Mars direction.

2. INSIGHT / MYTH - PERFORMANCE HAS NEVER BEEN ABOUT SPEED. IT’S BEEN ABOUT TERRAIN.

BMW is built on a belief: precision → control → freedom, but Earth is no longer the final terrain of mastery.

Mars reframes the brand not as a car company but as a mobility civilization-builder.

Performance becomes engineering as communion with hostile terrain. Mars becomes the mythic mirror for BMW’s next era.

3. THE LEAP - VISUALIZING “THE ULTIMATE ULTIMATE DRIVING EXPERIENCE”

My role was to turn philosophy into imagery powerful enough to move a boardroom.

I created a visual identity system and narrative direction for what became the Mars Terrain Initiative - a bridge between BMW’s present precision and its future environments.

This included:
• design language blending aerospace and German minimalism
• emotional anchor imagery that aligned engineering ambition with existential awe

The goal:
Show BMW not as a visitor to Mars, but as a brand evolved to meet it.

4. IMPACT - THE WORK THAT SHOOK A BOARDROOM EVEN IF IT NEVER LAUNCHED

The Mars direction was recognized internally as too bold and too expensive to execute - but boldness was the point.

The work:
– pushed BMW far outside its aesthetic comfort zone
– reframed the board’s understanding of “future terrain”
– positioned Mars as legitimate brand mythology rather than science fiction
– created visual systems that informed subsequent long-horizon sustainability and innovation discussions
– made space exploration feel like a natural extension of BMW’s ethos

Legacy Branding is about altering trajectory.

The Mars work did exactly that.

SPECULATIVE ACTIVATION BLUEPRINT - PROJECT XB

Unexecuted Experiential Extension

1. CONTEXT

If BMW claimed Mars as its future terrain, the world needed to feel that ambition - not just see it in a deck.

2. INSIGHT

A legacy brand becomes a future brand the moment it performs a gesture so bold that culture has to recalibrate its expectations.

3. THE LEAP

We designed Project XB, a global, symbolic activation intended to translate BMW’s Mars mythos into lived experience:

• A BMW concept vehicle placed in low Earth orbit - a new constellation of engineering
• Planet-wide LED “torches,” linking audiences through synchronized light signals
• A social-connected rover on the Moon, letting the public “drive” the future
• A broadcasted “Record of Humanity & Engineering” via SETI - positioning BMW as only the second entity after NASA’s Voyager to send a message to the stars

A unified, planetary performance of possibility.

4. IMPACT

The activation was never executed - but it served its purpose.
It expanded the board’s imagination, reframed what a brand activation could be, and demonstrated how space exploration, culture, and symbolism could merge into a single global gesture.