Thanks to its beefy advertising campaign (whose reach made it nearly impossible to avoid), I recently checked out MINI Cooper’s Hammer & Coop advertainment effort.

Featuring a series of extremely well-produced ($$$) Starsky & Hutch-meets-Knight Rider-style webisodes (supported by a bunch of fun features like its Action Name Generator), MINI’s Hammer & Coop site is jam-packed with kitchy 70s retro fun.

The webisodes are Will Farrel-movie-style stupid. They objectify women. They make MINI drivers look like morons. The positioning is risky. The images are somewhat racy.

But they made me—a member of MINI’s professional, 30-something, hipster Gen-X target audience—laugh out loud. More than once. I liked it so much that I even sent the link to some friends. And most importantly, they reinforced my perception that MINIs are FUN.

Which is exactly what MINI’s brand has always stood for.

Last month’s Fast Company featured a piece promoting the idea that “if you want people to like you, first decide who needs to hate you.”

“Most marketers feel that if they make a bold statement, they risk not just alienating customers—but also their boss, and their boss’s boss,” says Charles Rosen, founding partner of Amalgamated ad agency. “That fear takes the edge off of all communications.”

So in order to create a powerful brand identity—the kind with messaging that delivers more than a flaccid “hey”—a brand must be willing to define who ISN’T in its audience. This level of targeting enables a brand to take more risks so that it can actually stand out and reach the right audience.

My dad and his friends probably wouldn’t laugh at or even like Hammer & Coop.

But my dad also wouldn’t be remotely interested in buying a tiny non-luxury car. Which is EXACTLY why Hammer & Coop is so surprisingly smart.