Make hay while the crime shines?

 

I had to laugh at the marketing chutzpah shown by a German company.

A German company inadvertently embroiled in the Louvre Museum heist after one of its lifts was used in the theft is making the most of its free publicity - by launching a new advertising campaign.

Werne-based firm Böcker this week published a social media post, external featuring the now-famous image of its furniture ladder extending up to a balcony outside the Gallery of Apollo.

"When you need to move fast," reads a banner under the image. "The Böcker Agilo transports your treasures weighing up to 400kg at 42m/min - quiet as a whisper."

Video has emerged of the alleged thieves escaping on the mechanical ladder after stealing €88m worth (£76m; $102m) of France's crown jewels on Sunday.

The company's managing director, Alexander Böcker, told news agency AFP on Wednesday that, when it became clear no one was injured in the heist, it had used "a touch of humour" to draw attention to the family-run business.

There's more at the link.

It's almost always fun when companies apply humor to otherwise "difficult" situations as a marketing boost (provided no actual human tragedy resulted).  One of my favorites was back in South Africa, decades ago, when a motorist drove off a steep, unforgiving mountain road behind the wheel of a Mercedes-Benz E200 sedan.  To everyone's astonishment, he survived with only minor injuries (bumps and bruises), although his car was a write-off.  Mercedes-Benz South Africa made a big thing of it, with advertisements proclaiming that his survival was due to his driving a Mercedes, and suggesting he wouldn't have gotten off so lightly if he'd been driving anything else.  BMW South Africa promptly replied with its own advertisements, suggesting that if he'd been driving a BMW, its superior roadholding would have prevented him from going off the road in the first place!  Much amusement ensued.

Peter