Mercedes-Benz Vans are working boys’ toys at the best of times; cementing this proposition as part of its latest campaign Mercedes is using the World Cup and the summer biking calendar to reach SMEs
The van manufacturer is running two simultaneous campaigns: the ‘Vito Sport lifestyle social media campaign’ and the ‘Talksport campaign’. Both are designed to build brand awareness and reach SMEs through sport. Both campaigns also encompass social media in the hope it will help Mercedes reach its goal of building and earning brand credibility instead of buying it.
Social media activity
The Vito Sport van will receive the ultimate stamp of ‘cool’ approval by being covered in Animal branding (a clothing and accessories company) as it continues its partnership with The Animal Relentless Bike Tour and Team Ashton Diamondback – one of the UK’s leading mountain biking teams. It will be ferrying the team to shows across the country and staring in them as the team uses the vans to perform stunts.
The Vito Sport has a Facebook, Twitter and blog site dedicated to encouraging interaction between the mountain biking community and Mercedes-Benz Vans. Jeremy Farmer, head of social media for ISM, the agency responsible for the social media work in the campaigns, says, “Social media is a good way of squeezing the most out of the ongoing marketing activity” He adds that it has seen an uplift of activity on its social media sites, in the time directly after the event.
Farmer explains the Vito Sport lifestyle is aimed at van owners at the smaller end of the SME market and Mercedes is attempting to demonstrate the model’s suitability for weekend family usage, as well as weekday business use. The development of the brand in this lifestyle area will be ongoing.
Radio sponsorship
Mercedes has also teamed up with radio station Talksport in a bid to promote its larger Sprinter model. Tying in with the World Cup fever, it is sponsoring the station’s coverage of the football tournament. It is one of the station’s six sponsors but the only motor manufacturer.
The sponsorship began in April and will run through to the end of the World Cup. It sees a Mercedes-Benz Van trail topping and tailing World Cup adverts and traffic/travel bulletins in a bid to drive traffic to its microsite (madeforthepeople.com) and build awareness.
On the microsite, listeners can see if they can play ‘keepy uppy with the Sprinter van’ and other celebrity and sporting star competitors such as former Arsenal player Ray Palour and retired England cricketer Darren Gough. The game simulates keepy uppies – the skill of keeping the ball from touching the ground by bouncing it off your feet and legs – using the clicks from a computer mouse and rewards the person with the highest score over a week with a £50 voucher for football shirts website toffs.com. Mercedes-Benz Vans has designed the site to promote repeat visits by hosting the game and a free fantasy football league.
The van manufacturer has redirected its traditional national and trade press advertising with its sponsorship of Talksport. However, Talksport has a London-based sports digi-mag in which Mercedes will feature advertising encouraging readers to visit the microsite. It is also using banner adverts on its site and other football websites.
Two-way social media environment
Mercedes partnered with the sports station as it felt it would give it the opportunity to reach its target audience directly. Kevin Ferris, van marketing manager for Mercedes-Benz, says, “The fact we were the only motor manufacturers made the deal more appealing for us, as well as knowing we could reach the audience we needed.” Speaking about the heavy mix of social media in both campaigns Ferris says, “We wanted to create a two-way communication.” Preliminary results seem to indicate they are on the way to achieving this goal as they have over 350 fans on Facebook and over 680 followers on Twitter. When asked how hard it was to get people to engage with them online, Farmer says, “Because we tailored our sites specifically to our audience they responded enthusiastically.” There are no results available for the Talksport campaign.
Both Farmer and Ferris highlighted the need to move away from the corporate feel some marketing activity can evoke. Mercedes-Benz Vans wanted to avoid a one way manufacturer message and it saw social media as the way to achieve this.
