Marketing Disaster by BMW

What seemed like a cool marketing idea by BMW turned out to be not so cool when the cold weather took lives of more than 70 people.

In order to promote their car Mini Cooper Roaster, BMW paid a hefty some of A299 to get the current cold front named “Cooper” to advertise its Mini. Well, it was before the weather started taking people’s lives, so you cannot really blame BMW. In fact BMW, plans to name a low pressure area later this year as “Minnie”.

This brings us to a very basic question of whether companies should be allowed to name weather systems of not. Germany is the only company outside USA to name weather systems. BMW said yesterday that it regretted that people had died as a result of Cooper. “Of course we are sorry. It was not intentional, you cannot tell in advance what a weather system will do,” a company spokeswoman told The Independent.

This disaster is an embarrassment for Sassenbach, the advertising agency who made this campaign for BMW. Why they selected the name is something which they can only tell, but this sure has made BMW very popular in media, but only at the negative side.