Advertising sometimes provides us with a nice escape.
So much unpleasant shit happens in our daily lives and around the world that sometimes we just need to sit at our desks with a cup of crappy free coffee and imagine that our spirit animal is a young Italian kid who just wants to drive fast cars all day forever, the end.
Serviceplan Campaign International, which needs an acronym like, now, conjures up a bit of that fake magic by turning Venice into a racing town in its latest spot for BMW.
That was a legitimately dangerous and yet somehow thoroughly normal car ad.
From the release: “For the first time ever a car was physically driven on the canals in Venice, where a film crew were granted permission to film with a video drone, and the city allowed several pontoons especially for the shoot.”
The next paragraph really needs to be read in its entirety, emphasis not ours:
“No matter what we have done in life, what we have achieved, or what the future will hold for us – there is a certain magic to those moments we did something for the first time: the first time we kissed, the first step we took, the first time man landed on the moon. These are the moments we will never forget, we will remember differently, as being more pure, more intense. That’s because doing something for the first time often takes courage, it takes guts to question the given; it takes imagination to find that unbeaten path, the power to dream big – and the audacity to make it happen. Therefore we took THE 8 to Venice, Italy – a place where no car has ever driven before– a place where a great past meets an exciting present.”
Wow, that was a mouthful. Now somebody tell this poor kid he will never be able to afford a BMW.
And while we’re here, we can’t resist mentioning the fact that Venice is the least practical place on earth: it’s a slowly sinking museum to the Italian Renaissance that is always in the middle of an extensive repair job. And the total lack of amenities is a big red flag, too. Did we get to the part about how the food is terrible (especially the pizza) and it will all be underwater in 20 years anyway, so the best part is that you can kinda hear Billy Joel play Moving Out in San Marco, ugh? We spent a couple of weeks there in graduate school too.
As usual, the last word on this campaign truly belongs to YouTube commenters like one sOony57, who wrote: “Ladies and Gentlmen this is the manliest Car you can see on the streets right now Well Done BMW.”
Uh huh.
CREDITS
Client: BAYERISCHE MOTOREN WERKE
Agency: Serviceplan Campaign International
Alexander Schill, Global Chief Creative Officer Serviceplan Group
Markus Kremer, Executive Creative Partner
Thomas Heyen, Executive Creative Partner
Florian Klietz, Managing Partner
Kolja Danquah, Creative Director
Kristian von Elm, Managment Supervisor
Henning Rieseweber, Producer
Damian Kuczmierczyk, Senior Art Director
Bastian Tripp, Senior Copywriter
Daniel William Hill, Junior Art Director
Phillip Trübiger, Junior Art Director