We like to be positive here at the Art of Conversation but every so often we see ads like this. We can’t decide whether it is patronising poppycock or just twee twaddle. And it seems we're not alone in this view.
The Joy campaign started out as a rather good campaign for the new Z4, ‘the only vehicle in its segment to combine classic roadster proportions with a seating position close to the rear axle’. So there.
The agency GSD&M from Austin, Texas was apparently responsible for the original campaign, which featured a BMW Z4 painting circles on an enormous canvas. (A move which saw the ad being banned in Australia on the grounds that it promoted irresponsible driving. On really large canvases, presumably.)Then some clutz somewhere decided that, if Jack Daniels owns September and Coke owns Happiness, BWM can own ‘Joy’. We’ve got Wagner and Schiller on our side, they might have argued.
So they compiled this piece of ordure, with its cheesy, sub-M People soundtrack, its series of gurning drivers and clichéd car porn visuals and ‘say-banana-show-banana’ vignettes with an uber-irritating voiceover which reads out the strategy ‘at BMW we don’t just make cars we make joy’. Thanks for explaining, I never would have got that.
What I don’t get is what it’s got to do with BMW’s eco eD thing, as we see a 4x4 twirling on an ice cap trying to run down a polar bear.
It comes across as a planning-free zone. As a planner friend of ours said, it’s fluffy and forgettable, does not resolve any need, will not get talked about, remixed or passed on, has no traction conceptually, has no creative distinctiveness ... and it really undersells BMW.
Apart from that, good effort!
(Our normal, positive service will be resumed next week. Or possibly the week after that)
Yes, it's corporate wank. Not worth spraying your very witty spleen on though. Sadly, this is the tip of the wank iceberg.
Why don't you send your comments to BMW or their agency? That might actually start a conversation.
Posted by: Jim Fraser | September 11, 2009 at 06:16 PM