You know what would be terrible? Terrible in a sort of dystopian, capitalism-run-amok sort of way? Imagine buying a brand-new, fancy, premium-grade car. From an automaker with a respected name. Like, say, BMW. This is a machine with some status! Let’s say it costs, oh, $61,500, and you’re paying, what, about $1300 a month? Something like that.
Anyway, let’s say you’ve done that, you have your fancy new car you’re dropping over a grand a month on, and then you get in the car one morning, you start it up, and you’re greeted with an ad – a commercial, with visuals and sound – right there on the big screen in the center of your dash.
That would be terrible, right? I mean, hell, even on our little website here, if you just pay a tiny fraction of that car payment a month, we get rid of the ads – so the idea of a carmaker blasting commercials into your car, the car you’re paying for, that sounds miserable. And yet, somehow, it’s true. We’ve seen carmakers like Stellantis do it, and now it appears that BMW is in on this soul-crushing, avaricious bullshit as well. Look at this:
Got this commercial in my car today as part of the Spider-Man – Brand New Day campaign
by
u/Milanista58 in
BMW
What, you are likely inquiring unto the heavens, the fuck is this? And that’s a fantastic question. What’s going on here? Is that actually a full-motion-and-sound advertisement for a Spider-Man movie playing on the center stack screen of that new BMW? Why? How?
Reading the comments, it seems that the ad appears when the car is started, with an option to play it or not being displayed on the screen. I suppose that’s better than it autoplaying, but just barely. It’s still the car taking your time and attention and control of your car’s display to ask if you want to see a damn ad.
I reached out to BMW to get more information about this and to confirm it was actually real, and here is what I was told:
“The in-vehicle animation is part of a broader brand partnership with the film. A few of our vehicles – including the BMW iX3 – were in the film, and a special edition iX3 was featured on the red carpet during last night’s premiere in Los Angeles.”
There was also a link to a BMW press release about this ad campaign, and here is how this in-car ad is described in that release:
Exclusive Spider-Man™ animation available in many BMW vehicles.
To celebrate the partnership with Spider-Man™: Brand New Day, BMW has a special surprise for its drivers. The Spider-Man™ Animation will be available (in participating markets) to all customers with suitably equipped vehicles from 27 July to 10 August. Starting the car brings up a special banner in the Control Display. Clicking on it then activates the Spider-Man™ animation, comprising a full-screen festive animation in the Control Display with aptly chosen backing music and an accompanying light show courtesy of the ambient lighting system. These festive animations will be available in more than 70 countries worldwide for vehicles equipped with the relevant optional equipment and BMW Operating System 7, 8, 8.5, 9 or BMW Operating System X, as well as a production date after 7/2020.
“Exlusive,” huh? A “special surprise?” So there’s a banner ad that pops up, and then you can choose to play the “festive animation.” Lucky you!
Now, look – fun things are fun. Spider-Man is great! I’ve enjoyed Spider-Man since I was a kid! Hell, I think I was even excited to sit through this drivel just because Spidey was in it:
Man, that was some prime ’70s garbage, but dig that funky soundtrack, right? [Ed Note: Don’t sleep on Japanese Spider-Man. He has a giant robot. – Pete]
Anyway, AMC wasn’t broadcasting the opening for that show into black-and-white CRTs on the dashes of new Pacers over VHF not just because they didn’t have the money or technological know-how to pull that off, but also because nobody fucking wants that.
But now BMW is pumping ads for movies into your car and trying to make it sound like they’re giving you some big treat. I think that’s the part that bothers me the most, the couching of this all like we should be delighted that now there’s another place where we can’t escape the constant onslaught of advertising.
There’s something just so wrong about this all, a company treating the people who have bought their cars as just more marks, more targets to be advertised to, more chances to wring money out of those people unfortunate enough to choose to pay that company for their vehicle.
When you buy a car from BMW, do you actually own that car? I own a house, and I make payments to a mortgage company every month, and I’m pretty sure it would be illegal for that mortgage company to put a fucking Spider-Man billboard in my yard, facing my front windows. Is what BMW is doing any different?
Why is the ownership experience of a BMW the same as taking the cheapest tier of a streaming service, where you have to watch ads? If BMW wants to pump ads into cars, they should cut the price of their cars to compensate for the owner’s time! That’s not free, and I know they know that, because the value of that attention is what they’re charging Marvel for to run these stupid ads.
If you want to watch the trailer for the new Spider-Man movie, I think there’s a metric heptillion places to make that happen. No one needs to have this shoved at them in their cars.
I hate this so much. Maybe beyond rationality. I feel like if I owned a BMW and the car started to show me ads on the dashboard, the temptation to put my hands on the back of that screen and pull forward and down, hard, until I heard that satisfying snap of plastic and watched that screen’s image degrade into a colorful yet meaningless array of vertical lines until going black would be hard to resist.
For the past few years, BMW has behaved in a way that seems to treat their buyers as targets for more revenue over everything else. Remember all their subscription bullshit? People hated that, and worked around it, and eventually BMW had to dial that back, because having a subscription for heated seats makes people want to riot.
And I don’t think this is much better.
We’re being shown ads pretty much everywhere. Online all over the place, at the gas pump, as we drive on roads, when we take public transport, when we shop, when we go for a hike, when we do pretty much anything. A car should be a sanctuary from all this. It’s your car. Your dashboard should show you information about your car, maybe a map, and play the music you want. That’s it. Once ads start showing up there, a sacred covenant between carmaker and owner has been broken.
BMW is breaking this covenant. In response, I would suggest to simply not buy any new BMWs. Get an old Isetta if you want a BMW, but as long as that company sees the interior of their cars as a place to shove ads at a captive audience, fuck ’em.
No one wants this. No one asked for this. Knock it off.
Top graphic images: BMW; Marvel
BMW is trying to make up their massive budget shortfall (because they’ve repeatedly misjudged sales in the Chinese market among other things) by attempting to wring every last penny out of the drivers of their very expensive grocery hauling, soccer practice delivery machines. Drivers and BMW fanboys are perfect marks because they’re either a) a captive audience or b) are so hard for the brand that anything BMW does is ok by them. BMW execs have caught AI-fever so they’re sinking massive amounts of money into AI both internally and customer-facing, so buying, driving, servicing, and general customer support is going to get worse. If you’re going to buy a luxury car, don’t buy a BMW. Buy a Mercedes or Tesla instead. They hate it when consumers do that. 😉
They will charge a monthly fee to keep the ad turned-off….
I ran into Torch’s article second-hand on Metafilter (it’s always so lovely to see The Autopian being linked to by other people on other sites I visit!) and as I said there, this reinforces what I insist on thinking of as the wisdom (not stubbornness or autism, damnit!) in keeping my convertible ’91 Saab 900i for those times I do need a car, and an e-bike for times the car isn’t necessary and I don’t feel like paying AUD$2+/litre. I’ve put a CarPlay head unit and a wireless charger in the Saab, and mounted some 3D printed cupholders to the door cards I half-assedly retrimmed, to give me 90% of what 90% of people want from their modern car right there. Fuel economy isn’t great, and it’s not fast, but it gets better mileage than a Commodore, it keeps up with Camrys, it has an obscurity-based theft resistance, and it’s not costing me hundreds of dollars a fortnight to lease.
Reject what you’re told modern luxury appointments are. Buy or keep an old car instead, even if it’s while you save up for an EV (also totally valid!). One that’s imperfect but has character and reflects what you value, not what you’re told to aspire to.
See, I think this is a difference of perspective. I think there’s a good chance that the majority of people involved are completely, 100% sincere, and that’s TERRIFYING.
Some people don’t see the world filtered through adblock with silly ideas about privacy, either in the sense of “not being watched” or “having your own private space/time”.
Every bit of data will be used to make things More Relevant To Your Interests, and every minute will be an opportunity to enjoy connected media, with your Helpful Assistant (of course). Eventually, the content itself will be personalized and AI generated for you.
There’s an idea of a world that they’re making, and it’s why I’m so powerfully against ideas like software-defined vehicles and all the generative AI everywhere. It’s already terrible, but it leads to something more terrible. A world without privacy, without agency, without culture. Without freedom.
Thankfully Canada doesn’t seem to be a participating market… haven’t seen any of this nonsense in our i4.
Oh no, you’re one of the non-participating countries missing out on this entertainment opportunity!
I would question whether we really own our houses. Try not paying your property taxes for a few years, I would say we rent our houses from the county/city.
The philosophy/politics of taxation aside, the countries/cities I’m aware of aren’t running video ads when you’re having breakfast.
“Festive” is not a word I associate with Spiderman.
And who do they think they’re fooling by trying to play this off as a themed animation?? I had an Alpine stereo many years ago that would play cute animations for various holidays (and my birthday); there was no advertising involved, and you had the option to disable it. This crap BMW is pushing is nothing like that.
yep. BMW is getting paid to shove this in front of your face. Bmw is a shell of it’s former self. it’s not the “ultimate driving machine” its not the “ultimate consumer machine”
I spent some time in some new BMWs earlier this year as part of training that included “dynamic” aspects – aka we got to drive cars. There was some sort of virtual assistant that took up a bunch of screen real estate and kept wanting to introduce itself. That alone would have been enough to keep me out of one.
Shades of “Clippy”. On the long list of annoying Microsoft “features”.
Rented a BMW recently and that stupid assistant kept covering up the nav screen. And the nav is telling me things like “turn left” and then immediately “make a u-turn”. Hey BMW, fix your nav and drop the stupid ads and “assistants”.
It’s bad enough that Siri keeps popping up on our Toyota’s screen during normal conversations. No idea what phrases are triggering it.
That, and every time we turn on the car and the screen boots-up, it condescendingly tells us to drive safely and click the following “Ok” button to continue. (Ignoring it does continue, but it’s still insulting as hell to be lectured every time you turn on the car!)
My 2002 BMW (not a BMW 2002) has s similar acknowledgement every time it starts. I honestly don’t know what it says because I stopped reading it a decade ago, but it’s still there. New Miatas have it as well. I don’t know about anything else.
I think it’s boilerplate lawyer speak for “If you crash while looking at this screen, we are not responsible!”
I’m waiting for the day when studio executives figure out that HOA’s have a lot of prescriptive power, and “HOA Capture” becomes a viable marketing tactic, as studios capture HOA leadership who in turn require homes to put up specified ad campaigns under threat of HOA fines.
I hate that you just gave someone an idea.
I’m stealing this idea for my near-future dystopian novel.
Its cool, I heard you only have to watch the ad if you want to use a blinker to merge or turn, so it should be no worries.
I’m curious if the notoriously stern German auto authorities actually allow this nonsense in der Fatherland?
Pretty sure BMW hates their customers, or clearly doesn’t think highly of them. That might be true of most OEMs, but BMW is saying the quiet part out loud.
When I read stories like this it confirms to me that 2000-2010 is the sweet spot for cars. Lots of safety features (multiple airbags, ABS/traction control, side impact bars), convenience features (power windows/locks, cruise, heated seats) and a simple swap for a Apple Car play headunit and I’ve got everything I need, and all the crap I don’t.
Also, 20-25 year old cars don’t even look as old as they are. Can’t say that about a ’75 Pinto in 2000…or even a ’85 Camry in 2010.
My parents (both in their late 70’s) are due for another new car, at least in their minds, and I don’t know what to suggest…they’re comfortable with the infotainment in their ’19 Edge and it doesn’t have all this bloatware, but anything new…will just confuse them. Hell, it’d confuse ME.
The sweet spot for cars is always about 15 years ago. It’s been that way for a while – from 2000-2010, people were saying the best cars were mid-90s.
As a nice side effect, that’s also pretty close to maximum depreciation.
I don’t know if people will think that about cars from 2020 – 2025…they’re going to be much worse off with this kind of crap, all the bloatware. And I don’t know if that’s true of cars from the mid ’70’s…emission choked overweight and underpowered versus smaller more fuel efficient FWD cars.
In the late 80s people were complaining about how new cars were full of black box computers and would be unrepairable in the future. Give me a carburetor and a set of points!
Having bought 4 cars during the 70s, I can attest that 1973 and 74 were a very low point, with only slightly less suckage before (the smog stuff was easy to remove / tune around) and after (cats starting to come in for 75 helped a lot, and the new for 73-74 diving board bumpers gradually got integrated). Ten years on, if someone was reminiscing about their 1974 Impala, it would be about what a poorly running, audibly rusting in West Texas, half assedly assembled by angry drunken peasants dungheap it was.
Me and my 2011 335i agree completely with you.
My MIL is almost 90 and in cognitive decline, and someone recommended a FSD Tesla as a good option.
Hyper capitalism is disgraceful
We have a ’21 330e and I haven’t seen any ads. We do get cute animations of under a minute for some holidays, like Halloween, but not advertising anything. They seem to happen randomly just a few times a year as notifications that we can click on when the car is parked. I would not be excited if there was advertising.
I have a 2021 BMW I bought off lease in early 2024. The original buyer ticked every option box. My heated seats just work (no subscription) and I’ve never seen an ad on the 2 big screens. I read these stories and it seems like they must be model specific? I would find either rather annoying so I feel lucky.
If I already bought the fucking car featured in the movie why are you advertising the fact that your car was in the movie?
Oh! I get it now. The new generation at BMW misunderstood “Ultimate Driving Machine” to be “the last car you’ll ever buy” – _that’s_ why they seem so increasingly desperate to convince us all to never, ever purchase a new car ever again!
It’s now the first car I’ll never buy.
Ya’know, these jackalopes are actually doing me a favor.
Ya wanna give us nothing but touch screen for turning on the wipers (or whatever) when motoring down the road at speed, OK, I suppose I could figure out the muscle memory needed to do that… I did drive an BMW rental recently to involuntarily figure that out. The suckage was audible.
But ads, and tracking, and costing the effing earth to buy to begin with??? I can put up with a bunch of leaky gaskets for less money and as much or more fun.
In the immortal words of Animaniac Dot Warner:
I LUV you!!!! Buh bye!!!!!
+1 for the Animaniac reference.
Mindy (of Mindy & Buttons) said that.
I think the closest Dot had to a catchphrase was “call me Dotty and ya die”
I appreciate you all for bringing this back to my consciousness. I used-to quote those lines out of context for many months back in the day.
“Silly Puppy!”
BMWTF
I’ve got a Tron mode in my Tesla that turns the avatar into a lightcycle, turns the dash led strip red, and plays NIN. I use the mode to show off the car to someone new. Only 10% annoyed by that ad. Car has much bigger annoyances.