BMW’s Mini is the star of the Games

In true jumping on the bandwagon style, my stunt of the week is Olympic themed.

No fewer than twenty people have said to me over the past couple of weeks that there is one piece of Olympic memorabilia that they would really like to own: one of the remote controlled Minis that shuttle up and down the throwing bit of the stadium carrying back assorted javelins, discuses and hammers.

They say that to get your value from a sponsorship you have to spend at least as much on promoting it. This piece of work shows that doesn’t always have to be the case and that, just sometimes, a little creative thinking beats the biggest of budgets.

It works simply because its media placement is booked: there are 160,000 people a day watching the damn things for a week. And countless millions seeing them in action on their telly screens.

But that’s where the real cleverness lies: with a guaranteed audience, Mini has managed to create a little piece of disruption by bringing something to the Games that is utterly so incongruous that it demands attention.

Amongst all the feats of sporting achievement, a remote controlled car somehow commands the conversation simply by being so utterly out of place that you have to notice it.

If you don’t want to spend big bucks, Mini has shown us that (if you also want to stand out) you have to do something both different and unexpected.

It’s also reminded me that great stunts don’t always need a ton of zeroes on them when it comes to the budget slide – but you do need a bloody clever idea that will get people to do your talking for you.

James Gordon-MacIntosh is a managing partner at Hope&Glory PR and from time-to-time pens Spinning Around, a blog that he describes as “thinking out loud”. He is not unaware of just how much Mini’s parent, BMW, must have spent in sponsorship pennies for the Games and any comments about “low cost” are sensibly taken in that context.