This is the spot where some guy decides to go buy a BMW
after remembering about how he dumped Brooklyn Decker in high school and
decided against investing in Twitter. You see, he doesn’t want to lose out on a
car that will become a star and have a valuable IPO that will make him rich. Or
something like that…
The idea for this ad is cute, but it has some issues, the
first of which is the Twitter reference. Anyone who watches the news will know
that there are tech business stories quite frequently about how wildly popular
and important Twitter is, but that the company hasn’t really figured out how to
make much money off of it yet. I think it would have made more sense to use
Facebook as the reference here, and to have the hero loser of this ad say over
the phone: “I don’t see how that’s any different from MySpace. Nobody’s going
to use this thing when there’s already MySpace.” Then he could be shown on the
yacht his friend bought from all his newfound riches (the ones our hero did not get because he decided against investing), and it could be called: “Like: Being Rich”, with the Facebook ‘Like’
“thumbs up” thumb at the beginning of the text of the name on the hull of the yacht.
Then there’s another issue, and it’s about the conceit of
the spot. This is actually called the “Opportunity Knocks” ad and it’s clearly
referencing a guy’s past missed opportunities, and motivating him not to miss
another good thing. But it’s not really missed opportunities so much as it’s
bad judgment we see illustrated in this spot, don’t you think? The guy in this
ad didn’t miss these opportunities: he rejected them. (Oops!) And with that in
mind, it’s very easy for BMW’s competitors to make fun of this ad, saying that
the guy in this ad clearly always makes the wrong decisions in life, as seen in
the flashbacks, and once the ink dries on this BMW sale/lease, he will have another such episode where he sees a
beautiful Mercedes or Audi (or another luxury car), and he realizes he screwed
up again by choosing the wrong path,
mourning the better option he failed to select. (Also, BMW’s rivals can point
to this commercial and say: “Look: See how stupid BMW buyers/drivers are? BMW
even admits, nay celebrates it in
their own advertising! Look: See for yourself!”)
BMW must not be crazy about this commercial, because it’s
not available to see online anywhere, and I’ve used every imaginable search
criteria to look for it on Google and
YouTube. There’s no excuse for not putting an advertisement on the internet,
since when people choose to watch it, the company is getting free advertising (and also free public
analysis of the ad, sort of like a focus group that you don’t have to pay an
arm and a leg for. And so, with this all in mind, I guess they must not want
anyone to be able to pick it apart. (And talk about missed opportunities: this
ad bemoans one guy missing out on good things, and here BMW is missing out on
free advertising! Oh, the irony.)
Anyway, here’s a Wall
Street Journal blog article about it, seeing as how I can’t give you a link
to see it (but it’s on TV still, so you might see it if you watch enough TV):
