Today the first of my monthly barrage of auto and motorcycle magazines were delivered. Inside AUTOMOBILE was an insert of a book excerpt entitled "Men of Metal" Eyewitness Accounts of Humanoid Robots.

Has anyone else seen this?

 

Yep I saw it. And I don't really understand it. Mini has been putting out some of the best advertising I've ever seen. The ads have won countless awards and their guerrilla tactics have been creative. But this new piece confuses me. I don't quite understand the strategy behind it. Oh well, I guess it's original. And that's about it.

 

I just got it a couple of days ago in my issue of Motor Trend. Don't quite get it 'cause I just thumbed through it. Did notice the pics of the MINI though. Not really my cup o tea. I don't see it as being a MINI ad though.

 

If this isn't what you're talking about, it surely deserves it's own thread.

 

More info from MINI2:

http://www.mini2.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53854

 

"Men of Metal" is brilliant. It's stealth advertising for the MINI and could signal the shape of the next MINI ad campaign. It's also bound into the May '04 issue of Esquire.

"Men of Metal" is a 38-page booklet containing alleged "excerpts" from a new book documenting actual encounters between people and mysterious humanoid robots. Read it carefully -- it is a dead-on, painstakingly crafted parody of a certain paranoid literary genre: the UFO/Bermuda Triangle/time travel/Area 51 investigative report, alleging conspiracies and secrets and Officially Supressed Facts galore. In the proper perspective, then, it is absolutely hilarious. It even has photographs of the sketchy "evidence."

The MINI ingredient comes in slowly, as you read -- after a series of soberly recounted robot sightings around Oxford, UK, the author traces events to a robotics engineer named Colin Mayhew who works on MINI Cooper engineering with BMW Group. Of course, Oxford is MINI HQ, and Mayhew is having a "steady stream of MINIs" delivered to his home to be broken up and made into Transformer-type robots -- it would seem -- and the story winds up like this:

"Internal combustion robots are a reality. Recently, the robotics world was shocked by an autonomous walking dinosaur that was powered by IC. Quadruped trucks, hexapods, and walking robots designed for the timber industry also run on IC power.

"Many parts of the MINI Cooper are overbuilt. Consider the multi-link rear suspension alone. Any car enthusiast will tell you that on a front-wheel-drive car, a multi-link rear suspension is overkill. Yet there it is on the Cooper. To this say, MINI has offered no formal explanation."

There's no MINI logo on the booklet, no claim of ownership, nothing to give the game away or defuse the illusion. The "author" does refer to "Dr. Mayhew's private website" several times, though:

http://www.r50rd.co.uk/reserarch/internal/v2i/engin/

... and R50, as many of us know, was the MINI's internal designation prior to production.

This is probably the most literary, challenging, advanced ad campaign of the decade -- the writing, by "Rowland Samuel," is sly genius, and the "product" lurks in the background all the time -- and if "Men of Metal" really does presage a full-blown visual campaign with MINI robot imagery, that's terrific. Even if it doesn't and "Men of Metal" is a stand-alone, one-shot effort, it makes the point that only certain smart people perceive the MINI's special qualities.

Make an effort to find and read "Men of Metal"!

 

My neighbor, who subscribes to Automobile magazine gave me the book last night. He thought it was real. I went home and read it. I told my wife, "It's a MINI ad!" Damn funny. I love the fuzzy pic of the robot's head with a MINI cap. This campaign is much better than the last iteration (the big-head 60's cartoons). Very stealth, very out there.
Checked out the website this morning. The videos are obviously 3-D renderings, but very good ones.

 

Heh, VW did this already with a New Beetle ad five years ago and more succinct: "REVERSED ENGINEERED FROM UFOS." Hence, the annual largest New Beetle gathering convention of New Beetles in Roswell, NM every June. I think BMW is somehow trying to copy that ad campaign.
-BruinToo

 

Good read - saw the excerpt in Motor Trend, read the rest just after.

Just for a hoot I cut the tops and bottoms off beer cans and stuck them on the MCS tailpipes! Should have snapped a pic...

M