Among the usual April Fool press releases was one from Kia about its new model, the Concept i, which costs less than £4,000 and comes in flat-pack form for home assembly. Then there was an insurance company survey with the headline “One in five admit to having used their car as a toilet: 22% of drivers have urinated in their own vehicle.” Finally, there was a real corker from Maybach. It was simply a picture – no accompanying story – of rap artist P Diddy sitting on a Maybach, apparently fiddling with his genitals.
The only one I was momentarily taken in by was the flat-pack Kia: I was on the verge of ringing up to ask for a test-drive. It also turned out to be the only one of the three that was an April Fool. The insurance company’s survey is enough to put you off ever buying a second-hand car but it’s the Maybach one which left me gaping. Maybach positions itself as the maker of “the ultimate luxury limousine” – an aspirational vehicle at the very peak of a tiny, highly-exclusive market segment. Not quite the image portrayed by P Diddy and his genitals, surely?
I guess P Diddy probably has enough clout to fiddle with just about anything he wants, either on, in or around a Maybach. But if I were the Maybach sales director I’d be cringing right now.
Although…. it might just have a positive sales impact!
AlfaMartini | 04 Apr 07 - 14:08The power of suggestion: - (Planetary Alignment Decreases Gravity)
In 1976 the British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that at 9:47 AM on April 1st a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur, and that listeners could experience it in their very own homes….
The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth’s own gravity. Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation.
When 9:47 AM arrived, BBC2 began to receive hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation. One woman even reported that she and her eleven friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.
AlfaMartini | 10 Apr 07 - 18:54