IN 1958 David Ogilvy, the founder of agency Ogilvy & Mather, pinched a quote from the technical editor of The Motor, who probably pinched it from a Pierce Arrow ad in the 1930s. It became the most famous headline in advertising.
“At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.”
Ogilvy justified to US readers why they should fork out $13,995 for a car. “With power steering and power brakes you don’t need a chauffeur,” he wrote.
Fifty-six years later, Beat Richner wrote a headline that may become equally famous: “The Shame of Super Rich Cambodians and BMW Rolls-Royce Europe. A Peak of the Iceberg of the Decadence of Brutal Capitalism.”
Richner was offended that Rolls-Royce had set up a showroom in one of the world’s poorest countries. At the opening ceremony were Cambodia’s Minister of Industry and Handicraft, Cham Prasidh, and Rolls-Royce’s Asia-Pacific regional director, Paul Harris.
Rather than being offended, this group, including the two local models (persons not cars), who draped themselves over the front sections of the Rolls-Royce Wraith, saw it as a sign of Cambodia’s emerging status.
Driving around the streets of Phnom Penh last week, it was not immediately clear where you would get to really stomp your foot down and get from 0 to 100km/h in 4.6 seconds.
There are too many tuktuks and people wandering the streets to get close to that speed.
Richner is a Swiss pediatrician, whom the Red Cross sent to the Kantha Bopha Children’s Hospital in Phnom Penh in the mid-1970s, only to be forced back to Switzerland when the Khmer Rouge arrived.
A decade later, he returned and reopened the children’s hospital. He then created a foundation that has funded four more children’s hospitals.
Click here to read on: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/executive-living/motoring/why-the-red-crosss-beat-richner-finds-rollsroyces-offensive/story-fngmee2f-1227064230007
