Your brand can't go there?  Really?  Or is it that you can't imagine a way to get there yourself?

Brands with a fixed identity are not only boring, but are likely to lose relevance over time.  While a brand needs to stand for something, to have a firm point of view, it also needs to be able to evolve, to learn, to grow.  Brands need not be static entities. Imagine a person who achieved greatness and then decided to remain fixed in place… yes, I don't want to party with them, either.

I admire the marketers at BMW because they seem to be able to conceive of their hallowed brand as a dynamic, living thing.  Instead of saying "our brand can't go there", they think "our brand is designed to go places", which I'd wager is why the brand is still so strong after so many year in the market.  The dynamic totality of their vision, which encompasses everything from manufacturing to sculpture to R&D to messaging, is centered on the principles of movement and getting to new places, with the risks that come with leaving the safe harbor called What We Know That Works Today. 

As a result, they're able to ask an artist like Jeff Koons to mix a little 2010-flavor joy with their current ultimate driving machine to come up with the brand vision above.  This beauty, an M3 GT2, will be gracing the streets of Le Mans, France in just a few weeks, taking the brand to new places.

You can go there, it just takes guts.  It's a bigger risk not to try.