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
This is just baffling behavior for a supposed luxury brand. BMW has been pushing a lot of this kind of discount regional airline type nickel and dime crap lately, and it could really cost them in the long run if they keep it up.
So, the monthly rental of the butt warmers didn’t work out so well, so now this?
Oh, wait – this is probably all part of a master plan: pay us a monthly subscription and you can be ad free!
Hard pass. I ditched my HP printer over their stupid ink subscription requirements, and I’ll avoid any vehicle that has anything similar.
Forget Right to Repair – we need some Right to Peaceful Ownership legislation, because the manufacturers are too stupid to police themselves.
And the German auto manufacturers wonder why they’re not in great shape just now? Look in the mirror, a-holes.
Same, I haven’t owned a printer in 20 years and hardly used it prior due to the ink BS. Oh, I’m afraid I can’t print that B&W, Cerberus. You’re out of magenta.
I could kind of see the print thing, IF you had a printer that didn’t have a dedicated black cartridge, but the scanner being disabled because one ink cartridge was low?
Somebody at HP was an absolute idiot. And now I’ll never buy another HP product again.
Canon did the same thing and I can assure you it was no accident.
Mine came with 2 black cartridges, even (or maybe they were twice the size of the colors, I’m not sure)! My mother got it for me because she knew my past battling printers (we’ve always been at war) and still thought I needed one. She said they told her it could print if it was out of other colors, but they lied. On top of that, the ink was so expensive that I hardly used it, so when I did, it would often be dried up and I’d have to run test pages, which wasted more ink. I even gave generics a try, but the machine wasn’t fooled (I think I might have even tried swapping the RFID out, but unlike with the water filters on my refrigerator, it must have been serialized and logged as used or I did it wrong as it didn’t work). When I was first printing manuscripts to shop around, I printed the first 2 at home (and had to babysit it because, if I loaded it with more than a half-dozen pages at a time, it would jam), then it ran out of the new ink cartridges I had bought and there were none in stock nearby. I threw the thing across the room and brought my file to an actual printer who charged me 1/3 the price it cost me in cartridges! That was a Canon, but I had an HP before (which got Office Spaced except that i did it in my living room). The Canon seemed to survive the scale caber toss with only superficial damage, though I never actually tried to print with it again because it was out of ink and damned if I was buying more cartridges.
I do not understand why printer trays are so damn small. I refuse to believe it’s that much harder or more expensive to add an extra inch of vertical space
Mine could probably have fit 80 sheets or so, but would jam up if I loaded more than about 6-8.
That’s because you got the Bob Marley signature model.
It took me way too long to figure out that joke.
They knew exactly what they were doing. They’re an asshole, not an idiot.
An a-hole makes a decision that costs the customers money. An idiot makes a decision that costs the company customers (and thus costs the company money).
Perhaps. But I think most of us view printer companies like internet providers: they all suck equally. Maybe it was only HP but I assumed all of them were doing the same nonsense of not letting you scan or print b&w if you didn’t have enough cyan
Brother is the last holdout of b&w laser printers that just work and don’t play games with the toner.
That’s the way to go. Laser cartridges don’t dry out and work fine even if dormant for months, and cheap per page. What’s the point of color since most people use their phone to display picts. Brother is my hero.
BMW: We deeply apologize for displaying unwanted advertisements on the dashboard screens of our new vehicles. Until a permanent solution is available, BMW owners can deactivate the ads by simply pushing down on their turn signal levers.
BMW Owners: Crap.
The cure is worse than the disease!
Honestly, they could use this for good if the screen did something annoying when you didn’t signal
I guarantee you that all the old school mechanical engineers who made these brands great decades ago are cringing at this shit, while all the new hire tech bros and corporate yes-men are slapping high-5s to each other as they implement these hugely unpopular features.
BMW: The Ultimate Jiving Machine.
Movie Trailers are about the only ads I like. I do not want them in my car, and I want the number of them limited when I’m sitting down for a 2-3 hour movie so I don’t eat all my snacks during the previews. If I want to watch them, I’ll go to youtube.
Man if your user name was sam I was ready to do a whole green eggs and ham hi coo
I’d also be okay with a 700.
BMW is absolutely the very very very bottom of my list these days, even behind the questionable startups. I would even recommend a Lucid over any BMW product. They truly do not care about the cars any more. They’re just a vehicle (pardon the pun) for profits, via any possible revenue stream. The REAL BMW wouldn’t do subscriptions, wouldn’t do ads, and wouldn’t produce TOTAL PORKER TANKS.
Actually they are all about profits. Always have been. But in the old days business majors said build the car they want. Now marketing majors say take a product we sell use it for a reason the people who already bought it to abuse our customers we sell access but convince are idiot customers it’s a benefit. Fortunately for them only a BMW customer would fall for this crap
Even the cars in Cyberpunk 2077 don’t go this far, and that’s a dystopia with ads plastered literally on the roads and ceilings.
While others have covered our general disgust well, I’ll focus on the positive – Peter’s comment. Leopardon!
He even appears in the novel Ready Player One as an unorthodox but prime choice in giant fighting robots as prizes.
Hey BMW? Fuck you. And your ads. And your numb steering. You suck.
Got a new name for your acronym!
Bavarian Marketing Wanks.
You’re welcome.
And fuck you.
I think we can do better with the B like butholes or but lickers m for mounting wanks
Bite My W-word?
I can’t read this right now since this news makes me so angry. This is the stuff of nightmares…what fresh hell we live in! I will undoubtedly boycott BMW now…and any company who does this.
I will read it eventually though, since I’ve read basically every article from the beginning
Soon enough I imagine you’ll just be limited to what car newer MY30 (31? 32? Who knows) for any manufacturer.
At some point the cost of the entertainment system (screen + cellular for OTA delivery of content) becomes WAY cheaper than the ad revenue that OEMs will generate. So systems that have this capability just find their way into EVERY vehicle and print OEMs money. MONEY
Yeah, I already wouldn’t put it past them on doing it eventually… it’s things like this that makes the decision to never, ever buy a new car even easier! I’m already dead set and absolutely committed w/ no ounce of doubt to just keep buying awesome rusty junky classic cars (and certain ones from the 80’s/90’s) and fixing them up because… that’s what I want and desire.
No nannies, not a million screens, and no FUCKING commercials in MY own car!
My two BMWs don’t have screens. I am ever so thankful for that. In fact, as of about a half an hour ago, NONE of my cars have screens.
But BMW has been dead to me for some years now, so this BS affects me not at all. The very least of the reasons I have no interest in thier current and recent past production.
Not that I was the target market for newer BMWs anyway, but between this, the Buc-ees grilles, and programming their LED turn signals to artificially slowly brighten like incandenscent bulbs, completely defeating the safety benefits of LEDs, it seems BMW is actively designing cars with features I hate.
This is one of my biggest automotive pet peeves: The fucking around with turn signal patterns. Elaborately animated turn signals are so distracting in a bad way that it makes me feel like I’m being advertised to while driving. You know the dead simplest way to know someone is about to turn or change lanes? A blinking light. That’s it. That’s all it should be.
I thought it was just Mazda doing that, and yeah it’s so so dumb. I’ll pay more attention driving around.
I’m okay with Mazda because their turn signals at least initially illuminate with full brightness and then fade out. On BMWs it fades in and out.
“Hey, you know what will knock the socks off our customers? We’ll demonstrate that a freaking VIDEO can be played on their screen. Amazing, right? RIGHT?!” I hate marketing people.
Maybe you just need to subscribe to BMW+ to get rid of the ads, for the low extra $50/month.
BMW was charging $18/mo for heated seats.
We think getting rid of ads will be more than that? Probably.
It is obnoxious that this is even a thing.
You lost me at “an automaker with a respected name”.
German garbage.
This is the natural result of replacing the entire dashboard and instrument panel with a giant screen and instituting a permanent, always on, data connection. Of course an automaker was going to do this with those tools at their disposal
Oh yes just what I need in my car an advertisement and even one for the brand of vehicle I am already in. Really going to want to make me purchase another one.
Nothing they’ve made in several years interests me at all. And each new ‘improvement’ or ‘feature’ only serves to make their cars and SUVs even less desirable.
I’ve translated BMW’s response:
https://i.imgur.com/npiQyak.png
Just rewatched the 1998 Parent Trap remake.
Great movie.
And what does the evil Cruella character drive?
Of course it’s a BMW.
Bavarian
Money
Wringer
The Ultimate Money-Sucking Machine.
You know what brand feels no shame? BMW
Just like their owners.
In addition to paying extra for a perceived luxury marque, I’m trapped in a vehicle with ads? When the hoi polloi are tooling around in their RAV4s and CR-Vs for tens of thousands less and no ads at all?
No sale. No sale, forever. If this is the state and future of BMW, all my BMW purchases will be from the E21 and E30 families. Listen to me, BMW – this means no money for you.
RAV4 suv’s also dont drop 50% of their value in a year, in fact they keep it for 3 years or go higher.
If it’ll make Honda or Toyota enough $ from ad revenue, all their vehicles will be equipped as such. I am honestly surprised it hasn’t happened already.
Hey, I can go older on Toyotas and Hondas too. No ads in those used models either.
Shoot, I drove to work in a Toyota that uses a carb. You’d be amazed at the lengths I go to, to avoid ads. Never even turned the radio on.