Ecclestone strikes back at muggers with hard hitting ad
With his sense of humour intact and ever an eye for an opportunity Bernie Ecclestone, commercial head of Formula One, has transformed his recent mugging into a marketing tool.
On November 25 Ecclestone was relieved of his personalised Hublot Formula One watch, believed to be worth £200k, outside his central London office by four unidentified assailants.
Rather than cower from publicity however Ecclestone has come out fighting, contacting the watchmaker, on the day of the attack, in a bid to capitalise on the incident by graphically illustrating “what people will do for a Hublot.”
The one off ad featured in yesterday’s FT and International Herald Tribune and showed an untouched photograph of Ecclestone in the immediate aftermath of the incident, together with the F1 chief’s own commentary.
Ecclestone said: “I rang them up and suggested this was a chance to do something different. I can understand people wanting to rob me when they are poor and they want some things for the kids with Christmas coming along, but what they did was unnecessary.”