MINI Refuses Porsche's Refusal

MINI has refused Porsche’s refusal. The company is still trying to convince the performance vehicle maker to race it at Road Atlanta Race Track on June 21. As our readers noticed, MINI launched an air assault on Porsche’s North American headquarters yesterday, with the aerial space of the Porsche base being invaded by a plane towing a banner that rear “Dear Porsche, Bring It! Love, Mini.”

This probably won’t do anything to bring the boxer engine against the 1.6 turbocharged unit on June 21, but at least it offered us a good piece of entertainment. Something we expected from MINI.

What we didn’t expect from the fun vehicle producer was the release of video that fails to impress in any way. In addition to bringing the air banner into Porsche territory, MINI released a video in which it somehow re-challenges Porsche. If you ask us, we’ll tell you that the new marketing creation doesn’t come with any useful or funny assets. OK, maybe the video includes some amusing stuff, but we could’ve sworn that MINI can do better than that.

Remember the Looney Toons epsiodes in which one character lit the fuse, dropped the bomb in another character’s arms and the explosive was switched back and forth between the two until the second character was tricked into voluntarily taking the bomb which then blew his face off? It appears this is what MINI is now trying to do with Porsche, but the attempt seems too weak to even move a facial muscle.

However, we would like some marketing financial evaluation company to step in and tell us how much the free media coverage generated by this play is worth for the two carmakers.

(Un)educated guess: Porsche only wears polo shirts, so it can't understand messages from MINI, which uses T-shirts.