Meant to be a response to media reports about the automaker’s financial problems, management instability, and one mostly harmless joke, it quickly became the ultimate example of how not to engage in public relations on social media. Click below to read the rest of the story.
Funk Flex
Come and enter the delusion with us.
Lotus is an automaker that has historically been a money-loser for whatever larger company has owned the tiny niche brand. The current owners — Malaysia’s Proton — were just purchased by Malaysian mega corporation DRB-Hicom. That’s leading to all sorts of questions about the future of Lotus and its CEO Dany Bahar, who once freaked out when talking to us.
The press hasn’t been easy on Bahar and his ambitious “five-year plan” to save Lotus by introducing a bunch of models and hanging out with Billy Baldwin and Sharon Stone.
The general impression is that Lotus has down-played the constant drumbeat of bad news. That impression led brilliant parody auto news site SniffPetrol to create an image showing Bahar dressed up as “Baghdad Bob” — Iraq’s notoriously cheery ex-information minister — trying to assure people Lotus was in good shape.
There are supposed to be three ways to respond to a joke made at your expense: Ignore it, play along, or get mad.
