TTAC Report on Bangle Bobble Picked Up By German Press
After TTAC highlighted Chris Bangle's "axis of white power" verbal faux pas in a video on a BMW web site, Spiegel Online (German language site) has been looking into the incident. Calling the video a "PR disaster," they question how it ever made it through BMW's communication department. They then quote TTAC publisher Robert Farago: "English is Bangle's first language, he should be aware of such things." A BMW spokesman told Spiegel both the company and Bangle understand the criticism for the remark, and said, "Chris Bangle sympathizes in no way with any right-wing or racist positions… Bangle will make a personal statement on this topic on the BMW-Web-TV platform shortly". BMW removed the video from their site after the Spiegel interview; the link now takes you to a generic BMW PR video. Before they pulled it, a Google search on "chris bangle nazi" returned the link for the video. We may have raised the issue of BMW's obliviousness to Bangle's remark, but we sure as Hell know that ain't right.
[TTAC scribe Martin Schwoerer has kindly uploaded the clip onto YouTube.]
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Noted.
After I read this I didn't know whether I should laugh or be concerned about how seriously these few words were taken (words that were recorded and on display for 12 months without complaints, that is). Well, the matter of the fact is that nowadays every company has to be more than politically correct in every aspect, as it seems. I'm not taking sides here - I see that some people here think it was indeed an unlucky choice of words while most rather or less don't mind. I for my part, I was reading the aforementioned article in a german online magazine and that's why I came here. To TTAC, I would kindly ask you that once you started all this fuss about nearly nothing, you should be at least fair enough to mention that BMW has indeed answered on this matter with a special bulletin from Chris Bangle himself: http://www.bmw-web.tv/en/view/cid/0/pid/pXzR9IC Hopefully this will settle soon - you should not forget that at the german BMW HQ there are many, many people from all over the world working for this company who are thinking that BMW is indeed a great company. Regards, a bavarian but not a BMW employee ;)
I'm blogging the reply now.
Thank you.