BMW’s viral ‘Rampenfest’ campaign – thumbs up

Luck is probably the number one factor that makes a chosen few promotional videos go viral. But even when your video takes off, you’ll be lucky to please everyone.

 

The video-consuming public maintains high – I guess you’d call them moral – standards for corporate-sponsored viral video. YouTubers clearly like their camp, but they simultaneously demand authenticity. It’s a razor’s edge.

 

Exhibit one: BMW’s “The Ramp” mockumentary, on the planned literal, physical launch of new Beemer model from a small hamlet in Bavaria to the United States. The town’s sinister, horse toothed event planner had a giant ramp built for the launch event, “Rampenfest.” The physics professor added wings to the car. I found the 30-minute, Spinal Tappy film pretty entertaining. There were also Facebook pages of the characters, T-shirts, and an online Miss Ramp contest.

 

No one complained about the spoof so much as the fact that BMW didn’t immediately come clean when savvy viewers figured out BMW was behind the campaign (duh). The Wall Street Journal concluded that “by keeping mum, the German automaker was taking a risk.”

 

Said the Jossip gossip site, “the problem wasn’t that BMW didn’t take credit for its viral marketing campaign; it’s that BMW didn’t acknowledge a viral marketing campaign that was so obviously paid for and produced by the car maker, only somebody missing his right ventromedial prefrontal cortex wouldn’t have figured it out. And the savvy consumer who bothered to follow the stunt and invest so much energy in the project didn’t like being treated that way.”

 

Said NewTeeVee, “BMW should have acknowledged their involvement with a coy wink by leaving hints that make discovery part of the fun.”

 

They have a point. Timing is everything in comedy.

Yet despite the handwringing, I Googled and Googled and still couldn’t find all the anti-Beemer flames the writers were alluding to. In any case, BMW’s ad agency for the spot isn’t too worried: “People were saying it was real. People were saying it was a marketing campaign,” art director Scott Brewer told the Journal. “We and the company wanted to stay in character and let them have fun with that discussion.”

 

Will Video for Food’s defense of the campaign (“brilliant”) was particularly well argued. It’s just fashionable, says Kevin Nalts, to bash big corporate video.

 

Bottom line: if you’re lucky enough to go viral, ride the wave, don’t sweat the snipes, but don’t run it into the ground.