Now, a new band, coming out from I-dunno-where, by the name Cover Drive, have released its debut single called "Lick Ya Down." Yup. That is the title. But for some reason, the Madison Avenue type folks convinced BMW that it is a good idea to tie-up its young MINI brand with a sexually suggestive titled MTV. The video opens with its lead female vocalist rolling up a driveway in a MINI Cooper Cabrio, giving the car around 15 seconds of exposure, culminating with the camera focusing on the MINI badge at the car's rear.
This is J-Lo and Pitbull's On The Floor.
Some years back, I had the chance to speak to former senior staff at Lamborghini global. His tenure at Lamborghini was right after VW's acquisation of Lamborghini. He did mention that back then, Lamborghini couldn't be as successful as Porsche partly because the brand had a rather questionable image - that it was too associated with pimps, drug dealers, and the hip-hop crowd. They had to spend some years cleaning up the brand's image and vetting its dealer network, some of them were owned by mafias! Bentley too is popular amongst the hip-hop rapper crowd, with the brand featuring in quite a few song lyrics as well. But Bentley's association with hip-hop was a result of organic growth, rather than a deliberate move by the brand's custodians. So far, Bentley is doing fine, and introduction of the Flying Spur sedan drew in more buyers from the "right crowd" and balanced up its image somewhat.
Besides the two, there is another recent MTV that featured a BMW - Katy Perry's Teenage Dream featured a very BMW 2002 convertible. But it being an old car, I doubt BMW was directly involved in the MTV's production. You would expect them to be more interested in promoting their current range of cars.
1 comments:
How about automotive brand image in Malaysia?
I think the most obvious gangster car is the black Hoxxa Axxord.
Even the young gangster like the black Hoxxa Cxty.
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