The German firm claims the new Spiderman video it’s showing in peoples’ cars isn’t an ad. It plainly is
Oh, for pity’s sake, do we really have to be talking about this again? I’m afraid we must, because those who own relevant BMW models are talking about it and, largely, they are not happy.
It seems BMW has sponsored a new superhero movie, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, in which you will see product-placed iX3s and 5 Serieses, as is the modern film way.
And if you own a modern BMW, there’s a chance that the company will be so keen to tell you about this tie-in that, during some cars’ start-up or shutdown sequences (in 70 countries but not the UK or Ireland, I’m told), this message will pop up on the car’s big central screen: ‘Surprise: Spider-Man just dropped into your BMW’. Prod it and a 20-second Spidey-BMW animation will follow, to show you the iX3 and tell you the new film is in cinemas.
Don’t engage and it won’t play, but the initial pop-up is, for a limited period, there whether you want it or not. And that’s what’s irritating owners. It would irritate me too.
This isn’t the first time a car company has hooked up with a film maker for in-car content. On some Teslas you can change your navigation’s avatar so that it looks those one of those spangly bike things from Tron.
But here’s the difference: the car doesn’t tell you about Tron every time you start it. You actively have to delve into a specific feature menu and set-up the change. While you don’t have to play the full BMW video, there’s no way to opt out of the initial sting.
Does that feel different to you? It does to me. There is a difference between an ‘easter egg’ that you have to search out for yourself and a message that you have no choice about receiving.
BMW claims this animation “is not a form of advertising”, but what does a video that finishes with “BMW and Spider-Man: Brand New Day, exclusively in cinemas” sound like to you?
I would still have a problem with it, in the same way that I was cross when a U2 album landed in my Apple Music library without me asking for it. Call it what you like, but this is unrequested messaging in a product you’ve already bought.
All right, you might have only leased it or still owe thirty grand on it, and your name might not even be on the V5, but that’s not the point. It’s your car, your place, your haven. As a senior BMW executive said in 2023 when asked specifically about in-car adverts, a car is “a private space”.
Hide something away in that space, allow me to discover it and it’s a feature. Shove it in my face and it’s an advert. The content could even be the same, but they’re not the same thing.
As my marketing expert brother says, companies and agencies should have a 60-year-old in the corner to whom these ideas are pitched, and if his/her reaction is ‘really?”, they should go and rethink it.
But my gut aversion to this is also because of a feeling that it’s thin-end-of-the-wedge stuff. Last year, Jeep owners were infuriated when pop-ups appeared trying to sell them an extended warranty. A glitch made it appear on some screens more than once, but even once is, frankly, too often. Owners said so. Yet here we are again, warning big business off it. Again.
What don’t corporations understand about this? Partly, I suppose, it’s our meek acquiescence. Recently I went to watch the Boston Red Sox baseball team play the New York Yankees to find the scourge of piped-in Sweet Caroline had even made it to Fenway Park. Or maybe it originated there.
Sections of the crowd happily so-good-so-gooded along to it on demand, but it wasn’t so good at all. The best, most-thrilling sports atmospheres are those provided by fans alone, who have paid good money to watch the spectacle and should be left to respond as they see fit, not have some banal narrative dictated to them. And if that includes reactions or ribald songs that corporations don’t like, they can suck it up. We paid: it’s ours, not yours.
But they will all keep trying it, because they think eventually it will wear us down, as I suppose it will. As sure as Sweet Caroline filters repetitively into our ears, ever more adverts will thud inelegantly onto our screens, and we will all reply ‘so good’ and trudge vapidly onwards.