Now, before I go on, I know at good portion of you out there will read this and think well, dummy, you’re talking about BMW right now, aren’t you? So it worked! Any publicity is good publicity, right? I get that, and on some level I’m definitely overreacting here, but you know what? I don’t care; the “any press is good press” thing is a bit silly; I mean, if I were to go into a Pep Boys and start peeing all over the trailer light displays, screaming that the Dutch are controlling soil pH via satellites and that it’s making Americans sexually attracted to succulents, that would likely get people talking about me, too, but I don’t think it would really do any good for the Torchinsky Lifesmile Brand. [Ed Note: JT’s gonna go on a bit of a rant, here. So buckle up. -DT] In the same way, I don’t think everyone talking about BMW’s goofball social media gambit is doing their brand any favors, either. So, let’s see what they did, and if, after I show you all this crap, you run out and buy a new BMW immediately, then I guess you were right. It started with some simple text tweets:
— BMW (@BMW) December 13, 2022 Those double slashes, in hindsight, signify Dee’s voice. There’s a bit more of speculating on buttons and emoji shit and a poll and then this:
— BMW (@BMW) December 13, 2022 …so here Dee takes over, and it looks kind of like interrupting an old analog broadcast signal, because that’s how Twitter works, right? Tune your computer to UHF channel Twitter or some shit? Then a voice announces that “these channels are now mine” and there’s some CG animation of the text using aesthetics that mass media has trained us to associate with some advanced futuristic and likely sentient AI. This section also proves to anyone paying attention that this is not a real hack, because, come on, people who hack social media accounts aren’t fucking hiring voice actors or rendering out complicated CG animations. This feels like when some church youth pastor decides he wants to teach kids about charity so he rubs some dirt on the face of a well-fed kid from the suburbs in a flannel shirt and has them pretend to be homeless but absolutely nobody is buying it and no one says anything because, fuck it, nobody cares enough to get into a whole thing.
A post shared by BMW (@bmw) On Instagram Dee “vandalizes” BMW’s page, complete with nonsensical spray paint sound effects, and one of the things she does is scribble out the words “Sheer Driving Pleasure” and replaces it with BLAH BLAH BLAH, which might be the most alarming part of this silly campaign. I mean, for BMW especially, that’s not a great message. I don’t care if Dee the AI can’t drive, enjoyment of driving has been BMW’s MO for decades, and I don’t see why anyone who approved any of this thought that of all things for Dee to shit on, they’d pick that. I mean, it’s BMW, she could have made fun of subscription heated seats, for fudge’s sake. The accounts then sent out some meme-like images ostensibly from Dee suggesting that BMWs social media admins were caught off guard and the collective internet was desperately wondering what was going on there at BMW, which we very much weren’t:
These images are especially painful, because they’re sort of the corporate marketing equivalent of the “bae caught me sleeping” meme, because it’s just a whole stack of silly marketing lies piled one atop the other: the fake takeover, the fake shock from fake BMW social media people, the fake assumption that we’re all stunned and give a shit, all of it. The fake takeover (fakeover! Has anyone coined that term yet? I don’t want to Google it, in case that ruins my belief that I came up with it first) then started throwing up a bunch of low-effort meme-type shit like this:
— BMW (@BMW) December 14, 2022 Oh, and like the rest of humanity, Dee played with some AI art generator sites:
— BMW (@BMW) December 13, 2022 Then, she tried to borrow the goodwill provided by dogs:
— BMW (@BMW) December 14, 2022 Also worth noting is that none of these are really doing numbers, either. As of my checking right now, none of these have crested more than 200 likes! I mean, shit, I once tweeted about fixing my Yugo with two hose clamps and a rock and that did 428 likes (as of this writing), which, again, is nothing amazing:
— Jason Torchinsky (@JasonTorchinsky) November 27, 2021 And, it’s worth noting that I didn’t pay an ad agency anything for that sort of low-to-mid-tier engagement. I just had to get stuck in a shitty car. I guarantee you BMW paid out an assload for this campaign.
So, BMW’s fake takeover by their fake entity that likely represents the thing that BMW owners will yell at to find the nearest Shake Shack in the near future eventually shit out a dozen or so cringe-inducing posts before signing off with an animated mic drop:
— BMW (@BMW) December 14, 2022 Look, it doesn’t matter what I think of it, how did it play on the wilds of the internet? Are people charmed by this firecracker Dee’s devil-may-careitude? Let’s look at some comments!
…and boom, zero to Nazi in like three seconds. Great job! The internet really doesn’t disappoint, does it? Plus, everyone else just seems to be at best, eyerolling, or seriously considering an Audi like that one reply up there. Money well spent, BMW! Another triumph! So, what did we learn from all this? I guess that the next BMW assistant will be called Dee and they will try to make it into some sort of character, and that BMW got soaked and some ad agency is eating hoagies stuffed with $100 bills and only accomplished making BMW’s brand seem more cloying and desperate and out of touch than ever before. Bang up job to everyone, all around. #Blessed
See If You Can Figure Out What The Hell These Old Car Ads Are Talking About A Volvo Ad Copywriter Once Allegedly Wanted To Hang A Car Over A Baby But Had To Settle For Himself Instead It’s Time To Stop Sharing That Meme With All The White SUVs Because It’s Wrong And Stupid Got a hot tip? Send it to us here. Or check out the stories on our homepage. Support our mission of championing car culture by becoming an Official Autopian Member. That mystery aside, as someone who works in marketing, to me this smacks of the too-frequent requests I get to “create a viral campaign.” sigh That’s not how it works. With that being said, did BMW change the acronym? Boring-ass Meme Wankers, Perhaps? …am I doing this right? Yep, better you don’t ask why we are doing it. But just so you know; next week we’re changing it to daffodils. Again, don’t ask.
