BMW Takes Corners to Court in a Kafkaesque Ad That Skips Car Clichés

The campaign stages a mock trial to sell drivers on the brand's cornering skills.

BMW is putting corners on trial for being a public menace. Ripped from the nightmarish pages of Franz Kafka and shot like a film noir classic, the absurdist ad invites corner-phobic drivers to get behind the wheel and see how the automaker’s cars handle even the sharpest turns.

Created by Serviceplan Middle East and directed by Nalle Sjöblad through DejaVu Productions, “Get Even With Corners” opens with a lawyer captivating a courtroom with flair, drawing jurors into the case. Gently tapping the end of a table, he delivers: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we have a score to settle… with corners. Cold, cruel, conniving corners.”

The spot continues with an eerie edge, touring various sharp edges before capturing what happens when one gets on the wrong side of them: bashed foreheads, bruised hips, crushed toes. Anyone who’s experienced that jab of pain that takes your breath away will feel seen. Despite all this, corners have never stood trial, the lawyer pleads.

Upending traditional automotive advertising’s familiar formula of freshly polished cars zooming through pretty landscapes, “Get Even With Corners” doesn’t reveal itself as a car ad until the final moments, when a BMW appears onscreen, drifting smokily around a winding racetrack.

The campaign was created alongside AGMC, the authorized importer of BMW Group vehicles for Dubai, Sharjah and the Northern Emirates.

“BMW M is a brand that has built its reputation in the moments when the car, the driver and the road come together. A corner is where that relationship becomes tangible,” Ziad Boghdady, director of marketing and customer life cycle management at AGMC, said in a statement. “The quickest way to understand driving pleasure is to experience an M car through a corner yourself. Through this campaign, AGMC and BMW M are giving people who may be curious about the badge a playful reason to come and discover what that feeling is really about.”

While some car brands stick to automotive advertising’s familiar formula, others have used humor, craft and social commentary to stand out. Famous examples include Volvo enlisting Jean-Claude Van Damme to do the splits between two reversing trucks, and Audi sending in the clowns to comically demonstrate how to avoid them on roads.

More recently, Ford reimagined a 1970s cop show to promote its electric Capri, Mazda showed off its CX-5 through various movie genres, and Jaguar’s divisive rebrand launched with a “physical manifestation” of its “Exuberant Modernism” philosophy.