Well, after asking for idea submissions on it’s Facebook page in response to BMW’s “Checkmate” response ad, Audi has gone up with it’s own response, replacing the “Your Move, BMW” A4 advertisement with the one you see above. That was fast!

Audi Billboard Detail

That is the result of Audi’s marketing team’s hard efforts to counter the BMW M3 “Checkmate” ad. Like many of the entries submitted, the Audi R8 features (not a bad idea). But the ad itself; well as I’ve said before, how do you top “Checkmate”? You don’t. So the results are questionable, to say the least. “Check your luxury badge, it may have expired” (?) What is that supposed to mean and what does it have to do with chess? Nothing, apparently.

You might be wondering if BMW will counter with anything. In my opinion the best response to ad like this would be to drop it, it speaks for itself to say nothing. The marketing brains at BMW have done just that too. To make matters worse, both the ”Checkmate” ad and Audi’s”Your Move,  BMW” are gone, leaving this ad to reference - who? Here’s what BMW thinks about that:

Ad Overview

An advertisement for Barney’s New York. No BMW anywhere to be found. Brilliant! Is Audi telling Barney’s to check their luxury badge? Once again, Audi is outsmarted by BMW’s marketing team. Good job guys, this has proved to be really entertaining! I really hope we can see more of it from Audi and BMW in the future. Who knows, maybe Audi will come up with something clever next time? For this battle though, BMW definitely wins.