2010 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

The new Mercedes-Benz S400 HYBRID is the world’s first luxury series production car to feature a hybrid drive system with a lithium-ion battery. The technologies it uses make it the most ECO-friendly and ‘Green’ sedan in the luxury segment. Our challenge was to communicate its ECO-friendly credentials to an affluent audience of luxury sedan drivers (Audi A8’s, BMW 7 Series etc). We developed a strategy to influence this audience at a time when they are most susceptible to messages about fuel-efficiency – the petrol station. When a driver is filling up, they don't leave the car for around 4/5 minutes.

Creative Execution

The strength of this idea lies in its very simple insight. As with any car driver, luxury sedan derivers share one thing in common; they all have to visit petrol stations to fill up on fuel – a big offender when it comes to all things green. This gave us an instant link to the new S400’s ECO-credentials and a perfect opportunity to get our message across. The time between the driver saying ‘fill her up’ to the moment they restart the engine is essentially dead time. We simply utilized this aperture in an innovative way.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

The idea then was simple – utilize this aperture to get our message across. We partnered with Emarat Petrol Stations to create ‘live’ ads on their forecourts. When a luxury sedan pulled up to the pump to refuel, an S400 representative dressed in Mercedes-Benz overalls would approach the front of the car. After engaging with the driver, the representative would then spend around 60secs flicking through A3 cue cards telling the story of the new S400 Hybrid – a combination or illuminating copy and visuals. This ‘live’ advertisement culminated with prompts, encouraging the driver to book a test drive.

Results

With a minuscule budget, we developed an original and innovative way of reaching our target audience. Not only was this activity a first in the Middle-East, we’re pretty sure it’s the first of its kind in the World. This meant that the campaign gave Mercedes-Benz some priceless PR and exposure. The forecourt stunts gained considerable news coverage on national television, radio, online, newspapers and trade magazines. Finally, from a driver’s perspective it was clearly evident that we created the right impact on the forecourts. They were incredibly appreciative of the way we filled their ‘dead time’ whilst in their cars.