Mini challenged Porsche. Now Hyundai challenges Mini

I am not sure how many of you reading this are aware of the fierce PR battle going on between Mini and Porsche over something that I think is quite silly. Mini threw a challenge to Porsche for a race and the latter politely rejected the offer. Then the top guys at Mini went about creating some ridiculous videos that taunted the cult 911 maker. Let me give you a quick brief on what really happened.

Jim McDowell, chief of Mini, USA, came out with a video stunt featuring him inviting Detlev von Platen, CEO of Porsche in North America, to a race between Mini and Porsche. I don’t quite know what went wrong with you there, McDowell. I can only take a wild guess that you were perhaps desperate to be on TV or swamp the media with your antics to get some eyes on you.

Hyundai spoofs Top Gear in its latest ix35 commercial

Move over the dreary advertisements that Hyundai have been giving us. The so called ‘performance’ by Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan is much of overkill instead. This time round, Hyundai have gone all Top Gear, er… Top Deer, that is. Sorry for the mix-up.

Top Gear’s trio of power-obsessed Jeremy Clarkson, the-man-with-best-hair, James May and resident teeth-whitening-freak, Richard Hammond are perhaps the most famous motoring journalists the world knows today.

BMW’s amazing advertising concept

The creative, advertising and marketing teams at BMW went completely bonkers with this one. It was done to promote their new supplementing tagline, ‘Joy is BMW’. This stunt happened in Singapore and the German auto giant walked to the most insane level of advertising spends. Two giant hands appear to use two buildings as canvases to create 3D images of their interpretation of ‘Joy’. It is Asia’s first interactive 3D building projection. Check out the vid and drop in your comments. I personally think it is a unique and quite creative effort.

Audi-BMW Ad-War: the latest episode

Advertising is a mad world. It’s not friendly. It’s fierce. It’s satirical. And things in the motoring world are just getting worse. Or interesting, should we call it? There have been quite a few automotive manufacturers at loggerheads against each other for quite some time now. The advertising agencies hired are given a simple brief – to hit back at the opposition, as hard as they can, in as effective a manner as they can. That’s it – there is no talk of making the advertisement consumer friendly or any of that jazz. It’s all about getting the better of your rival.

This is the latest. It happened in a busy area of Hong Kong. BMW bought a massive advertisement space right above Audi of Hong Kong. And when I say massive, I am not making that up. The hoarding is indeed very big! So much so that you’d barely even notice the existence of that showroom.

For those who are new to this spectrum, this battle has been going on for a while now. Manufacturers like Audi and BMW have been hitting each other with powerful billboard messages – famous example is the Santa Monica (CA) incident. It is certain that the advertisement war is only going to intensify!

Pic Credit: Chris Junker