I love this story – and not just because there a tenuous Minnesota connection.

Apparently Mini Cooper accidentally sent their customers bunch of spam (unsolicited emails) recently, which is never a good thing. So to make it up to them, they sent a care package including SPAM (spiced ham) from Austin-based Hormel. Business Insider reports…

The package included a chocolate rose, duct tape and Spam.

“Nothing says ‘I’m sorry’ quite like flowers and chocolate, so we’ve combined the two and enclosed a chocolate rose,” the enclosed letter read. “But if you’re allergic to flowers (or chocolate), we hope this duct tape will help fix things up. Or, if you’re ever feeling annoyed again, you can de stress using this particularly squeezable can of spam.”

And for me the timing is perfect, this morning I am visiting a class at Lac qui Parle Valley High School to talk about online brand management. LqPV is a Blandin Broadband Community (BBC) and this visit is part of that project. I’m in town doing other training on how to build websites and market online. Going to the High School is a bonus and I just figured as they enter college and the work world after high school, students should be working on their personal brand management – the Mini Cooper story is a good one to use.

Sometimes it’s not about being perfect – it’s about dealing with your mistakes online and off and this is a great example of how you can turn something that’s not so great online (spam) in something that is pretty good offline (SPAM)!