Things car companies do not want their products associated with: death and backfiring.
Unfortunately for BMW-owned MINI, what was meant to be a cheap publicity stunt has associated both with the marque’s iconic MINI Cooper across a large swathe of Europe.
Most people would be familiar with the common practice of giving names hurricanes and tropical cyclones, going through a list in alphabetical order each storm season. Since 2002, the German meteorological agency has allowed people (for a small fee of around 300 euros) to name major high pressure and low pressure systems that originate in Germany, with Germany not really getting dramatic cyclones and hurricanes to name. The name must still be a legitimate first name and must fit into the season’s alphabetical order.
MINI’s advertising agency hit on the idea of buying two pressure systems and naming them “Minnie” and “Cooper”, getting publicity during every weather forecast for a few days for a mere few hundred Euros. Brilliant! Or not.
This is where the backfire comes in. Low pressure systems cause cold weather. Low pressure system Cooper turned out to be an extreme cold snap across Germany, Poland, the Ukraine, Russia, Bulgaria and Serbia, described as a 1 in 20 or 30 year event. With temperatures plunging as low as -33 Celsius in the Ukraine and -45 Celsius in Siberia, there have been nearly 100 reported deaths and well over a thousand reported hospitalizations with more to come: the German Metereological Service predicts the worst point of the cold snap will be Friday. For all that cold weather doesn’t get the global attention of tsunamis, floods and earthquakes, this cold snap is clearly a serious humanitarian disaster.
While obviously MINI didn’t cause the killer weather or intentionally attempt to gain publicity from a disaster, unless you believe all publicity is good publicity it seems that this is one car stunt that crashed and burned.
It is not yet known whether MINI will cancel the debut of high pressure system Minnie.
Image from sjr60 @ Flickr
