LIVE CLIENT BUSINESS CHALLENGE
BENTLEY: THE DRIVE
A cultural market-entry strategy for Bentley Motors, to enable a heritage luxury brand to reach the next generation of buyers, which has become one of the most important growth opportunities in luxury.
Research Lead, Pitch Deck Design
01 OVERVIEW
This was a live business challenge with Bentley Motors. Their problem was clear: revenue fell 1% on a 5% volume decline, operating profit dropped 42%, and the next generation of buyers isn't discovering luxury cars through dealerships anymore. We looked at where that generation is going instead and landed on Mumbai, the fastest-growing UHNWI market in the world, with a contemporary art scene that no luxury car brand has claimed yet. BMW is at the Delhi art fair and Porsche has moved into Southeast Asia, but Mumbai is still open. Our answer was The DRIVE, a branded art platform that puts Bentley inside Mumbai's cultural scene before it peaks, instead of advertising to it.
02 THE PRODUCT
Bentley commissions rising Mumbai artists, documents their work through its own editorial team, and builds a live activation around it: public installations, private exhibitions, and an artist-designed driving route with a narrated audio journey through the city. The car becomes part of someone else's cultural moment instead of the subject of an ad. As Research Lead, I worked on the market and competitor side, mapping how other luxury brands build cultural relevance with younger buyers before they're ready to purchase, which is what pointed us to art in the first place.
03 VALUE
The whole programme costs one Mulliner commission, one documentary, and one art fair activation, with no new headcount and no media buying, and the commissioned car itself brings in revenue on delivery. We also checked the legal side: Bentley already runs a Certificate of Authenticity programme for pre-owned cars, so the provenance system for an artist commission mostly exists. The remaining risks are operational, not structural.
04 WHAT THIS TAUGHT ME
The easy answer to Bentley's brief was a bigger marketing budget. The harder and more useful answer was showing they didn't need one, because the brand already had what it needed: its Mulliner commissioning, its provenance system, and its brand equity. Working with real numbers and presenting to the actual Bentley team made that feel different from a normal case study. We couldn't hide behind assumptions, every claim had to hold up against their own data.