Then you are not the target audience. BMW positions itself as a luxury brand. Aspiration is key to its success. If you consider aspiration and luxury "vapid and empty" you aren't who BMW is trying to connect with in this ad.

I buy primarily luxury brands, I just don't see "aspirational" and luxury being equivalent.

High quality luxus items have a quality of their own which has nothing to do with aspirational aspects.

You might ask yourself if the luxury brands you buy are actually as high quality as you think. Do you survey the items for signs of superior quality? It's not a very easy thing to do if your not educated in the matter. I'm not suggesting you are wrong in your thoughts or beliefs, but you might discover that some products are not evidently higher quality and that the assumption of quality came about as a result of its association with the idea of of luxury and aspiration.

for example, clothing construction at the higher levels is not exactly easy to judge. I don't know anything about stitching patterns or common fail points, but if Ralph Lauren advertise in a way that suggests that the people who wear their clothes are also the people who wear Rolex and drive Mercedes, people will make that connection.

Even if you think immune to this stuff, you aren't. If you think you could be classified into any particular social group, you are probably riddled with these kind of beliefs. I think it takes a prolonged and deliberate effort to avoid the tricks of advertising

About clothes: Since my wife is sewing a lot for herself and our kids, and does this very well, I can see the quality difference towards normal clothes so much.

My tailored suits already opened my eyes before, but in common day items it is ever more apparent to me now. Seams that don't fit or are crooked, stitches missing etc.

With respect to BMW or Audi etc. Most of the 'quality' comes from constant re-iteration of reviewers calling something high-quality, just because it is the way they know it.

Clothes and accessories are more straightforwardly signaling devices. Cars are interesting because they split the quality vs. signaling divide. To some of my friends, the point of a good car is to be seen in it. To others, like my dad, the point of a good car is what you can do with it alone on a country road. If may only leave the garage when you're taking it out for fun; you roll up to work, social occasions, etc. in your more ordinary daily driver.

Most BMWs fall into the daily driver category.

From the luxury items RFC:

Luxury items MAY be high quality but they MUST be aspirational.

That perceived quality difference of aspirational brands is caused by a halo effect. Functional differentiation is severely limited and inferior to competing on a sense of shared purpose which lifts brands above the competition within product category. Nike, Tesla, Starbucks all do this.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect

That's the correct reaction. Ads like these are a blatant attempt at emotional manipulation, and they should be followed by placing the company on the "avoid buying anything from" list, preferably with two red minus signs appearing above your head, The Sims-style.

This type of ad typically does provide information. It tells you what kind of person the product is for, and how the product should make you feel.

You're not their target.

You could say this to anyone who says they didn't resonate with the ad. Except you are not proving in any way that the person you're saying that to is in fact not the target audience.

Do you really believe these ad makers are so infallible that they can't completely misread their target audience? Or are you making the mistake of believing that the target audience is by definition the ones who like the ad?

A surprisingly large target of this kind of ad is people who have already bought the product, in order to validate their decision and change them from "person who bought a car which happened to be a BMW" into "person who identifies as BMW owner".

BMW has sold many cars using many of these ads over many decades.

I take that as evidence that the ads work and the ad makers haven't "misread the target audience".

I think the other question is do you really think you’re able to outsmart an industry that has had decades and billions of dollars to develop its marketing strategy?

Maybe if you’re Elon Musk, who’s top 0.001% of human business talent, but even he’s had over a decade at it and isn’t yet churning out cash.

I don't even know where to begin here; The Elon Musk worship or the stockholm syndrome your corporate overlords have instilled in you :). But, I guess I'll go with the latter.

I'm not Elon Musk, but I don't need to be and neither does anyone else. There's absolutely no reason to believe that any person (not specifically me) ,who is not in BMW, could in fact have a good insight to something they're doing wrong. People commenting here on HN could be working in marketing or marketing adjacent industries and notice problems that are very hard to see from within the organization itself.

In fact I'd argue that nearly every organization has some sort of blindspot and bias that informs their work due to the company's history and structure. And it's not necessarily true that those biases materialize in ways that are beneficial.

BMW is no exception.

We’re approaching the same thing from opposite sides.

My only point is to consider here: is BMW default wrong or is BMW default correct?

My default is to understand why a system behaves how it does before using my own value system to say why it’s wrong.

Part of this progression of thought is there’s usually very good reasons as to why things are how they are. It’s really hard to outsmart lots of time, money, and people.

It’s my belief that until we understand the thought, theory, and progression of events that led the system’s current state, we’ll probably make similar path-dependent mistakes when we propose solutions so I assume the system is default correct until it’s fully understood.

My point about Elon (who’s considered a success to some :)) has had industry marketing success but it took him over a decade and billions to do it.

You're right that we're coming to the same thing from different sides.

I would definitely not argue that BMW is default wrong, but I also would not argue that they are default correct.

I think our difference of opinion here is rooted in our different understandings of the power of money, time, and people.

All three of those are very important and are definitely a multiplier on the ability of an organization to both advance and implement some solution.

However, my opinion is that those things aren't the only factor that lead to a successful solution. Your root ideas that you're using those three things for must be based on a core idea that's correct. I'm saying that, that core idea could be completely wrong or misguided. Especially in this case where BMW seems to be targeting a new demographic, with a new product. Right now they're in a learning phase in my opinion. And yes they can use some of their institutional knowledge from similar marketing pushes in the past to make sure the message for this EV is polished. But that past knowledge only goes so far. Drawing analogies and parallels between the two (historical marketing efforts and this modern one) fall flat in key ways. They are not and cannot ever line up 1:1 where the knowledge transfer just gives them a working cookie cutter recipe that works 100% of the time.

So going back to approaching the same thing from opposite sides, I think I'm really getting at this same thing you said "It’s my belief that until we understand the thought, theory, and progression of events that led the system’s current state". However, I'd take a different fork and say that while understanding all of those things is important, it doesn't mean that the theory and the process of implementation are necessarily fault free. I'd say that there's actually 3 options here: BMW is default wrong, BMW is default correct, or BMW is somewhere in between default wrong and default correct.

I think it's the latter where no organization is ever on the extreme ends. So really I think our disagreement is base around how various factors unique to them play into which way they "lean" on this continuum leading to the likelihood that they're correct.

Marketing gaffes and the need to readjust after getting feedback while launching a new campaign are common in my experience. (Yes, I know, my experience haha). But the best way I can judge a situation without having first hand details... which many of us here don't and we're just all talking for fun. Is to use my experiences, value system, etc. to voice an opinion that is definitely up for debate.

But I definitely don't think this specific situation is as black or white as "you're not their target"