Porsche Goes after Nissan on Ad Insult

The world of advertising is probably the single place where any given manufacturer can go after its rivals without having to justify itself in front of anybody. Yet, at times, one's actions and advertisements are detrimental to the other, a situation often resulting in a lawsuit or something similar.

So is the case with an ad featured on billboards across the UK. In the campaign, Japanese manufacturer Nissan tries to minimize the work of German manufacturers Porsche, BMW and Audi by using tag lines such as “The Germans Came Off Wurst,” The Guardian reported.

Yet, it was not the billboards which prompted Porsche into taking action. During the Goodwood Festival of Speed, several Nissan sports cars where badged with the logos of the three German carmakers. Next to them, Nissan scratched the five-bar scoring system, with the number depicted by the bars representing the number of times the Germans where beaten by the Japanese on the Nurburgring track.

That offended, apparently, the PR guys from Porsche. Whereas in the US the luxury carmaker responded to MINI's challenge in style, in Europe the Nissan “joke” was not so much appreciated and nearly became enough reason for a lawsuit.

"The problem arose with them using our Porsche crests," Andrea Baker, head of public relations at Porsche justified the no-sense-of-humor response from Germany.

"They are our property and we do not give permission to any company to use our crests without our permission. This applies to any company."

Nissan responded to the situation by replacing the Porsche logo with the Porsche word. The logos of Audi and BMW, the ones who didn't b***h about it, stayed on the sports cars.