Another ad about me hits our screens. Mercedes has taken a spooky and moody treatment to promote the cars to a younger audience with three TV commercials using 'I am Mercedes' as the payoff. The first aired in May featuring Josh Brolin, star of ‘No Country for Old Men’, and the last has just gone out featuring David Leon, soon to appear in Guy Ritchie’s next piece of work. These ads take time, care and significant investment to develop.
They are artworks. I am Mercedes. But am I any the wiser as to why I should spend £40K on one? I am unclear. It’s not that complicated a brief to sustain the emotive connection the ads make as we go online. Now that pretty much every new car sold is substantively researched online before anyone goes near a dealer, it should be an imperative to have a linked up strategy for the web. But (and I hate to say it again) when I search ‘I am Mercedes’ I find two sponsored links – one to the Mercedes web site, the other to the I am Orange thingy I’ve commented on previously both here and on the MRM Worldwide UK blog. All the natural search links are to various trusted places where I can see the ads again, so that’s good. On the Mercedes web site though, I can only see…the ads again!
And some production sequences as well. Hmm. Two things spring to mind. When will we stop thinking that the making of the ad is interesting to anyone but ourselves? Secondly, in this instance, shouldn’t the online experience be the starting point?
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You're quite right, of course, about the lack of integration and the unfortunate 'strategy sharing'. But I would suggest that the actual driving/owning experience should be the starting point, rather than the online experience - it might be that the online element helps prospective buyers to get more of an idea of this....
Anyway, we all know that every Merc is a comedown after the 1955 300SL ;-)
Fair point about the driving experience, (or should we call that the sitting in traffic experience now :-? If time with the brand and the car is important, when consumers spend a lot of time online researching the new car, it is the place where attention needs to be seductively kept
Sorry the only ad i can remember is "Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ? My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends. Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends, ..."
Oh Janis.
Gotta love Janis.
Alastair Duncan
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