GENEVA: The battered face of Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone features in a new advertisement for a Swiss watchmaker.

Ecclestone was mugged by four attackers and robbed of his watch and jewelry worth 200,000 pounds ($315,000) in London last month.

The design released Tuesday shows a photograph of Ecclestone with a black eye and scratched face _ provided by the F1 chief himself from a mobile phone _ being used in ads for the Hublot brand.

“He said, 'please use it to make an advertising campaign because I want to show that I'm courageous,”' Jean-Claude Biver, the watchmaker's chief executive, told The Associated Press.

“I thought, wow, this guy has some guts.”

The tag line quotes Ecclestone as saying: “See what people will do for a Hublot.”

The ad also says the Geneva-based firm “condemns all forms of violence and racism.”

Biver said that his friend Ecclestone showed “a kind of British humor” and defiance by supplying the picture for free and suggesting the ad campaign.

“It is also a protestation against violence that we are all afraid of today,” Biver said in a telephone interview.

“Some years ago we thought this would only happen in Brazil or the Latin countries. Now suddenly it comes to London, to Paris, everywhere.”

Biver said the advertisements will run for three days this week, featuring mainly in the Financial Times newspaper.

Hublot is the official watch supplier of F1.