I’ll state this up front: I like BMWs. Cars, motorcycles, watches, whatever. Sure, scads of jackwagons literally tool around in 3-series automatics every day, clogging the highways and nasal passageways with whatever the 2010 equivalent of Drakkar is. But if you like to drive – and I do – it’s hard to beat a BMW inline-6 with a manual transmission. If only I still owned one and not a minivan. Heavy sigh.

Anyway, BMW Motorcycles recently created an ad that is intriguing on two levels. First, it wrapped the concept around dreams, encouraging viewers at one point in the spot to close their eyes. Upon doing so, people saw the BMW logotype floating as an afterimage on their closed eyelids. Oooooh, how sciencey. Take a look at the spot and its making-of below:

Fairly nifty, no? The interesting thing (and second, if you’re still keeping track) to me is not so much the spot – which really isn’t that great – or the gimmick. It’s the fact that this bit was purposefully done to go viral. After all, it’s not exactly the most cost-effective means of reaching an audience. And how many in that theater are in the market for a BMW-style motorcycle? No, this spot was done purely to show how neato keen the minds at BMW are. That’s the ad. That’s the brand re-enforcement. BMW as a company is so on the forefront of leading driving technology and engineering that they can’t help but be on the forefront of ad tech, too.

Not bad for a bunch of Hasselhoff fanatics.

Later,

Fox