Convincing a new generation that Mercedes isn’t just their grandpa’s luxury car.
Mercedes introduced the $30,000 CLA in 2013 in a bid to get younger buyers to engage with the brand, but they still had a fundamental perception problem: the people they were targeting didn’t want a Mercedes at any price because they didn’t think it was cool or sexy, and that was an issue, because they had a lot of these cars. We needed to change the way people thought about Mercedes, fast.
We created Take the Wheel to do just that, hiring five majorly influential photographers to participate in a relay race across the country where each drove the car for five days, documenting it live on Instagram, before handing it off to another influencer. This created a barrage of very cool content over a month-long period counting down to the car’s launch, all starring the not-yet-released car. If you’re looking at this now you might be thinking, “so what,” but in 2013, this was a major innovation, being described as a ‘new evolution in earned media’, and was one of the first brand campaigns shot entirely on iPhones.
By the time that the car was available, five weeks later, it had sold out - almost exclusively to people under 40.
Awards
Effie Award - Automotive - Silver
Cannes Lions - Branded Content & Entertainment - Shortlist
IAB Mixx Award - Product Launch - Silver
IAB Mixx Award - Branded Content - Bronze
WOMMA Award - Engagement - Silver
MMA Smarties Award - Direct Response/Conversion - Gold
MMA Smarties Award - Brand Awareness - Silver
MMA Smarties Award - Product/Services Launch - Silver
Digiday Video Award - Best In-Stream Video Ad
WARC 100 Best Campaigns of 2015 - #47
Epica Award - Online Campaigns, Automotive - Silver
Press
"This campaign represents a new evolution in earned media... This is taking the paid, owned, earned model, and really focusing on the owned and earned and ramping that up to a new level."
-Laura Shin, Forbes Magazine
