BMW’s ‘Crop Circle’ Marketing Campaign Confuses Chinese Media

BMW creates an advertising campaign for the 2012 BMW 1 Series in China but it did not end up as good as they expected. The reports of a mysterious circular pattern in the Gobi Desert in China became noticed by the Chinese media on August 17th. Magazines, newspapers and state TV stations, thought that it was strange phenomenon and reported this to the people. The common interpretation was that it was something from a UFOs.

After a week, BMW revealed that this was simply a viral marketing campaign and the patterns were simply crop circles, symmetrical with 1-2 inches deep marks. A a major news entity in China revealed BMW’s hidden hand behind the viral commercial on Aug. 25. BMW published an ad video explaining that the spirit of the vehicle–and its prospective drivers–is “UN1QUE,” and that this fits in with the fake crop circle news because UFO stands for “UN1QUE For One.”

Some people were amazed at the campaign, but most people raised their eyebrows about it.

Source: TheEpochTimes | weibo.com