Mini Cooper on Cutting Edge of Silliness

I knew there was something wrong with those Mini-Coopers. They're just too damned cute for their own good.

Now we learn ("Billboards That Know Your Name," Barnaby Feder, nytimes.com) that when you buy one of these cartoonish golf carts, you are automatically enrolled in a sinister brainwashing cult designed to eat away at your gray matter and reduce you to a blithering idiot in no time flat. Apparently, when you're tooling down the freeway at 10 mile an hour, enclosed by towering semi-trucks on all sides, your car will be identified by a radio tower and a personalized message will be beamed at you from a display on a "talking" billboard.

Ignoring the fact that it would be a good idea for drivers of both mini and maxi vehicles alike to pay attention to the road, the singularly stupid examples include: "'Mary, moving at the speed of justice," if Mary is a Lawyer, or "Mike, the special of the day is speed,' if Mike is a chef. Ignoring, once again, the fact that the billboards seem to be attempting to advise people to exceed the speed limit, isn't it the case that the wheels of justice grind rather slowly at times? (Is that the point? That the Cooper is slow?) And pardon me, but it sounds more like Mike is a drug addict!

Who wrote this copy? And, a more salient question, who on earth would want to look up and see so lame a message as these. Come on, Mini USA, hire a writer, at least!

Oh, but I guess I'm missing the point, the point being to deliver an innocuous message, one that can't possibly be construed as offensive to anyone at all--and furthermore, one dumbed down to the lowest common denominator in the manner of TV.

But still, once again, who wants to see it? If you're the kind of person who thinks it's cool to look up on a billboard and see a personalized message, then this will probably leave you flat (especially after about the fiftieth time), as the messages aren't really personalized. They are less for the driver apparently--since that's a sucker they've already hooked--than for the other poor souls who have to look up and be assaulted by this latest innovation in visual pollution.

What Mini USA is trying to do is to create a sort of exclusive club. They want other motorists to feel envious when the Cooper owners get a "personalized" message. Unfortunately, I think most people would be more inclined to laugh. Though I might laugh at first, upon reflection I would tend to feel sorry for the Mini-Cooper driver--someone so insecure that he or she required this infantile type of reinforcement of their choice of product. I know Mini-Coopers are rather toy-like, but am I really to conclude that all Mini-Cooper owners are simpletons or babies?

Finally, privacy concerns. When you get a message, Cooper-owners, don't you realize that everyone else in the vicinity is going to start looking around for the Mini-Cooper? Now they know your name. Is that good? I guess it's only your first name, but still. (They could also perhaps deduce your profession.) Maybe to be on the safe side you should use a pseudonym--which kind of defeats the point once again, whatever it is, at least for the Mini-Cooper Owner.

"There's no piece of this that's invasive," the marketing manager says, but my question is, what's the piece that not invasive? Even if you don't sign up for the program, they still have the technology installed to identify and track your car. The company may be called Mini USA, but apparently that's just Newspeak for Big Brother.

It's a shame about the mini-cooper, since people really ought to be buying smaller cars. (With the war for oil in Iraq being shoved down our throats, I'm surprised that more people aren't taking pot-shots at the dunderheads who persist in driving Hummers and similar gas-guzzling behemoths.) Thank you, Mini USA, for providing an alternative to the SUV. But please, drop this nauseating advertising campaign with its intimations of a surveillance society. Be a real alternative to the oil industry and the ad industry that seek at every turn to dominate our physical and mental landscape. Though you're trying to promote this as a fun car, at least some people are probably buying it because it's a small, more fuel-efficient car. And to tell you the truth, if I want a fun car, I'll get a Corvette.

Ed Hamilton
www.hotelchelseablog.com

www.blogchelsea.com