Owners of certain BMWs are seeing Spider-Man: Brand New Day ads on their dashboards. It’s “insanely dystopian,” one customer writes. Having already breached the $1bn milestone less than a week after its release, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is inescapable in this summer’s multiplexes. And if you’re a BMW owner, it may also be unavoidable in ... Some BMW owners are seeing Spider-Man ads every time they start their cars
Owners of certain BMWs are seeing Spider-Man: Brand New Day ads on their dashboards. It’s “insanely dystopian,” one customer writes.
Having already breached the $1bn milestone less than a week after its release, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is inescapable in this summer’s multiplexes. And if you’re a BMW owner, it may also be unavoidable in your own car.
From late July, BMW drivers began to notice an animated Spider-Man advert appear on their dashboards each time they started their cars. Clicking on the ad leads to a longer commercial, showcasing the sponsorship deal between the car manufacturer and Sony – hence why BMWs also have a fairly notable presence in Brand New Day itself.
The ads appear in BMWs built after 2020 and which run more recent operating systems according to Techspot, and cover vehicles sold in over 70 territories – though not in the UK and Ireland.
BMW has tried to put a positive spin on the marketing exercise, calling it a “special surprise” for its customers. It also refers to them as “festive animations” in its press release:
“Starting the car brings up a special banner in the Control Display,” BMW’s announcement reads. “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.”
What might seem like a special surprise to BMW’s marketing department has become more of an annoyance for some of its customers, however.
On the BMW subreddit, users shared clips of the ad playing on their dashboards and voiced their anger that their expensive luxury cars had begun to resemble a free-to-play mobile app.
“BMW should stop with this shit,” one user wrote.
“They’re just starting,” another replied. “Why do you think they removed the screen from the driver and put it in front of the passenger? So they can run ads throughout your journey.”
“$130k just to get a Spider-Man commercial,” wrote yet another, referring to the price of BMW’s high-end motors.
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As The Autopian notes, BMW had previously pledged never to use its cars’ dashboard display as a venue for ads.
“Your dashboard should show you information about your car, maybe a map, and play the music you want,” the outlet writes. “That’s it. Once ads start showing up there, a sacred covenant between carmaker and owner has been broken.”
Back on Reddit, users also drew a comparison with Apple’s ill-advised move in 2014, which saw U2’s album Songs Of Innocence pushed to 500 million iTunes accounts – whether customers wanted it or not.
The backlash was so vociferous that it quickly became legendary – it’s even parodied in the 2016 comedy Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, in which its fictional boy band has an album pushed to internet-enabled household appliances across America, sparking a massive power cut.
The Spider-Man ads are unlikely to do much to change Brand New Day’s box office dominance. It may have left at least a small dent in BMW’s reputation, however.
Of the prospect that the manufacturer’s dashboards could soon become an animated billboard, one Redditor wrote, “Nothing would make me sell my car faster.”
