The Mini Cooper Autonomous Robot

The website of Colin Mayhew offered details on how this eccentric, but apparently brilliant, engineer had built an "autonomous crash-preventing robot" from the body of a BMW Mini Cooper r50. Video showed the humanoid robot in action, stopping a car from crashing into a wall.

Elsewhere on the web there were reports of humanoid robots spotted prowling the streets of London and Oxford, popping up out of nowhere to stop cars from crashing. The website of Casson Publishing also included in its catalog Men of Metal: Eyewitness Accounts of Humanoid Robots by Rowland Samuel.

In reality the Mini Cooper Autonomous Robot, Colin Mayhew, and Casson Publishing were all part of an elaborate viral marketing campaign designed by the ad agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky to promote the new Mini Cooper.
Advertising Hoaxes Viral Marketing Campaigns Internet Websites Technology Robots Hoaxes of the 21st Century


Comments

To show how limited the minds of advertising executives are, about two months later, the new compact hatch from Citroen came out with a television campaign featuring a transformer version of the car that performed a dance routine, using the very same idea. The tag line was "Intelligent Creativity."
Posted by D F Stuckey  on  Thu Dec 30, 2004  at  06:16 PM