Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC

AuthorCynthia Tokumitsu, Chris Amorosino, Candice Mancini
Pages983-996

Page 983

1 Mercedes Dr.

Montvale, New Jersey 07645-0350

USA

Telephone: (201) 573-0600

Fax: (201) 573-0117

E-mail: mailmaster@mbusa.com

Web site: www.mbusa.com

MERCEDES-BENZ CORPORATE BRANDING CAMPAIGN
OVERVIEW

Mercedes-Benz of North America was at the peak of its game in 1997 when it launched a comprehensive print and television brand campaign. Its sales were generally strong, its products were highly rated by industry analysts, and its market was loyal. This last point, though, held the seed of trouble; Mercedes knew enough not to remain complacent about its market. The plateau was illusory, because markets are dynamic: if Mercedes did not expand its market, and at the same time continually romance its existing market, eventually the market would be lured elsewhere. That year, Mercedes introduced its largest product line ever. New offerings included the M-class sport utility vehicle, the SLK roadster, the CLK coupe, and the E-Class station wagon. These joined the Mercedes classics, the S-, E-, and C-Class cars.

One unique aspect of the new brand campaign, created by Lowe & Partners/SMS, New York, was that it had no tag line. "One of the reasons we don't use a tag line is to bring new attributes to the [Mercedes] star," explained Michael Jackson, executive vice president of marketing for Mercedes, in Advertising Age. "The star is already one of the most admired logos in the marketplace…. This is going to be a remarkable defining of brand Mercedes in new ways." That assertion was no overstatement; the ads targeted a new younger market, emphasized visuals and sometimes music over dialogue, dispensed almost completely with product descriptions, and incorporated such elements as humor, whimsy, and even raciness.

The brand campaign, Mercedes' first since the early 1990s, was intended to lay the foundation for specific product launches later in the year. It broke in mid-February 1997 with a 30-second commercial on prime-time network and cable television. The television component was accompanied by six print ads, as well as outdoor, transit, and airport ads. It comprised five ad spots: "Symbols," "Press Conference," "Mercury," "Falling in Love," and "Don't Fence Me In." The spots ran initially for nine weeks and then reappeared later in the year. Each of the print ads featured an object that incorporated the Mercedes star, with one descriptive word, such as "fun," that related to the brand. Not once was the word "Mercedes" used.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

By the end of the 1980s, U.S. sales had dropped for most European luxury car makers, including Mercedes. The economic recession, the luxury tax, and the dollar/mark valuation were part of the problem. In addition, Honda,

Page 984

Mercedes is one of the most recognized luxury brands in the world. © Frederic Pitchal/Corbis Sygma. Toyota, and Nissan were launching their first luxury lines in the United States, a move that split the luxury market three ways—American, European, and Japanese—instead of the previous two. A June 1991 report by the automotive market research firm J.D. Powers & Associates revealed that luxury owners appreciated status and prestige but "bought reliability." Reliability was the area in which Japanese cars excelled, even though Mercedes used about six times as much labor per car as did Toyota. The Powers study found that luxury buyers ranked Mercedes (and archrival BMW) higher for status than as cars they actually wanted to own. Among the reasons was that Mercedes were harder to maintain than the Japanese brands—the result of their being crafted more than manufactured

The mind-set behind Mercedes' approach to production and its markets was expressed by Edzard Reuter, then chairman of Daimler-Benz: "We constantly study our position and we always come to the conclusion that we should stay away from mass production. The economies of scale wouldn't help us. Besides, we have a culture of engineering and product differentiation that would make it difficult." The cars were expected to last at least ten years, and some models could travel smoothly at 150 m.p.h. Although Germans and other Europeans were willing to pay for this hyperengineering, Americans increasingly were viewing it as irrelevant. By 1991, Mercedes was only beginning to pay attention to what the customer, and the American customer in particular, wanted. Before that, reports Alex Taylor in Fortune, Mercedes' motto was "The best or nothing." In 1990, the company changed it to "The best for our customers." This rewording coincided with a move to start improving production efficiency.

Turning some the focus from engineering to the customers prompted the recognition by Mercedes of North America that the future lay with the baby boomers. This group had a vastly different sensibility than did the traditional Mercedes customer base. Mercedes made its first deliberate attempt to reach this boomer audience in 1994 with a TV ad by Lowe & Partners/SMS using Janis Joplin's song about a Mercedes, with the famous line, "Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz?" The ad received mixed reviews from industry watchers: Bob Garfield of Advertising Age considered this ad to be "an unspeakable misappropriation of '60s iconography … in support of the bourgeois trappings [Joplin] soulfully rejected." The Dallas Morning News noted that "while a risky departure from Mercedes' staid image," the ad "turned out to be wildly popular with the baby boomers the company was targeting." Cordell Koland of the Business Journal Serving San Jose & Silicon Valley called it "a breath of fresh air" and said "it was almost like seeing an ad for the Vatican featuring the Dallas Cheerleaders."

Mercedes continued in the same general direction with its 1995 campaign, also by Lowe. In the midst of a "demographic and cultural transformation," as Garfield described it, Mercedes still was not entirely natural with a hip stance. One commercial, set in New York, featured cameos of the designers Donna Karan, Bill Blass, and

Page 985

Isaac Mizrahi admiring a new Mercedes. However, the spot was full of inside jokes that would mystify most non-New Yorkers. Another commercial in the campaign depicted three cupids trying to help the owner of a Mercedes fall in love with his car. The message, presumably, was that it is okay to have a passion for your car. A third spot showed a Mercedes driving down the road, passing supermodel Paulina Porizkova, then space aliens, then Ed McMahon beckoning with a $10 million check. The voice-over says, "The new E-Class is so much fun to drive, what would you possibly want to stop for?" Particularly surprising for Mercedes, given its staid image, was the TV spot "Paradise Woman," featuring actor Michael Richards, who played Kramer on Seinfeld, in a racy bedroom scene. The final spot in the series takes place during an unusual rush hour; a Mercedes is surrounded by a herd of computer-generated rhinos. When one rhino kicks the door, the side air bag inflates. "Heaven knows," the voice-over muses, "there are animals on these roads."

Albert Weiss, director of national marketing communications for Mercedes-Benz of North America, stated to Koland that the goal of the campaign was to reconnect with the marketplace and establish relevancy with it. "The common thread throughout all these TV spots is relevancy—the things that our buyers relate to." In less than 10 years, Mercedes had gone from telling its buyers what they should value and presenting the product to them as a given, to trying to address their lifestyles and needs through the style as well as the content of its ads.

TARGET MARKET

When Weiss discussed the 1994 and 1995 ad campaigns with Koland, he explained the need to communicate to a "broader, more diverse universe of customers." Those ads therefore targeted "a new generation of buyers—the baby-boom generation who are now entering our demographic segment." He further noted that the ads also reinforced the attributes that appealed to the current Mercedes-Benz owners. The 1997 brand campaign by Lowe continued to target these two groups, with growing emphasis on the baby boomers. The continuity among the various campaigns indicated that Mercedes recognized the need for persistence and steadfastness in communication, as well as ongoing efforts to understand the baby boomers. With those campaigns Mercedes was in essence building a relationship almost from scratch.

These "younger buyers" were people in their 40s. Most of Mercedes' current customers were in their 50s—in 1997 the average age of a Mercedes buyer was 52. The company expected the age of those who would buy the newer models, such as the SLK, the CLK, and the M-Class, to be in the 40-to-45 age range. If they had made enough money to purchase a Mercedes, these boomers could be considered part of the "establishment"—executives and professionals, but they did not necessarily start out that way. Often their path to financial security wound through the cultural upheavals that began in the 1960s. Even though on the outside the boomers may have resembled the more...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT