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With the increase in interest of social marketing and social networks it was inevitiable that we would soon be seeing some known brands reach into this medium. Brand Republic has reported that BMW has launched an exclusive social network for its drivers in China – a worldwide first for the brand in an effort to bolster brand loyalty.

There new site was launched this week and is designed to engage with China’s 150,000 BMW drivers. I want to say a big well done to Edelman Digital, the agency responsible for the site’s marketing strategy as they hopefully will be able to showcase this to other Brands considering similar strategies.

According to Brand Republic’s story, BMW chose to launch an independent site instead of creating pages on existing social networks to avoid privacy and security setbacks as well as have the autonomy to build the platform according to the technical needs of its users.

This is certainly good news for those of us in Social Media Marketing to see some steps towards developing these types of campaigns. I am personally interested in the approach of using their own site for social engagement rather than a typical community or fan page within an existing SNS.

If anyone is involved with this campaign or has updates please let us know.