Via Samizdata, this little wheeze by Castrol, apparently.
MOTOR OIL COMPANY and BP subsidiary Castrol is about to start drive-by-badgering drivers about what kind of lubricant they should be using in their cars.
Thanks to some blue-sky, ‘lets run it up the flagpole and see who salutes’, ‘push-the-envelope’ thinking from ad agency Ogilvy Advertising, the firm will position cameras and blinking billboards by the side of the road and use them to flash oil suggestions at car drivers. The ‘service’ is so far only on trial and that will run for two weeks – or until some distracted driver loses control and smashes into one of the signs in question.
Thanks to a privacy-tickling arrangement with the DVLA, Castrol apparently is in a position to search for vehicle details based on licence plates, specifically the make and model of car, and use that to put up a display that tells drivers to change their oil to the most applicable formula.
Is this for real? Someone please tell me it ain’t so.
Well, if it is, they will have some fun with my French registration. And, if I still had a UK registered vehicle, my response to Castrol’s “What oil should I use?” flashed large at me following them photographing my numberplate, would be, “Not Castrol…”
It gets more like the dystopian world of Minority Report by the day…