O Lord, won’t you buy me, a Mercedes-Benz?

I’m going to begin with a statement that to some people will be almost sacrilegious.

I do not associate this song with Janis Joplin. In fact, I don’t associate this song with any artist. I associate this song with Mercedes-Benz adverts.

In my defense, the first time I heard this song I was about 9 or 10 years old. Even back then in the mid-90s, I doubt many 10 years olds would have known who Janis Joplin was.

However, many 10 year olds would have been watching TV and would have started singing a song because of adverts like this one.

(Actually the ad I specifically remember was much more American and involved a silhouetted Merc driving off into an orange sunset at the end – if anyone can find that version of it I’d be delighted to see it again!)

Now I know what some of you are going to say. “Do you not realise the irony of fondly reminiscing about an ad campaign that used an anti-consumerism song as its soundtrack? Don’t you realise that you’ve been duped by a big faceless brand into being a hypocrite?” Honestly, it wasn’t until I was well into my teens that I even learned of Janis Joplin’s existence (nevermind what anti-consumerism was) and now I’m an adult and I know the roots of the song, I still don’t particularly care. My memory of it is simply enjoying the music I saw in an advert. And it will be the same for millions of others who remember these ads from an earlier time in their lives.

Music’s loss is advertising’s gain

Whilst that may be a sad or disheartening conclusion from a musician’s perspective, from an advertiser’s perspective the campaign was a great success, measured by one simple KPI. Sing the first line of that song to anyone old enough to have heard it in the mid-90s, and they’ll likely be able to at least hum the tune back you with a small smile and an unrecognized positive association with Mercedes-Benz. That kind of powerful branding and (I don’t have a better word for it) fame lasting for 20 years or so is rare but not completely unachievable. Yet I fear in today’s advertising world, even blue sky planning for a campaign like that would not enter into a strategic discussion. Instead, the view-through rate, engagement rate, CTR, bounce-rate & dwell time would all be collated into a spreadsheet and pored over by a head of branding about a direct-response style ad that will be forgotten about by next quarter. See the A class ad from last year as an example of something instantly forgettable
.

This for me then begs the question? Why haven’t Mercedes stuck with this song? The longer you carry on with a successful message, the stronger an association gets and the more difficult it is to replace with a new one (just ask Guinness about their “Made of More” campaign which still hasn’t supplanted their “Good Things Come to Those Who Wait” tagline from 15 years ago).

Yet when I was searching for the ad that I remembered from my childhood, I found out to my surprise that this song IS still out there promoting Mercedes.

Why haven’t I seen this before?

Tucked away on YouTube, on a self-run video maker’s channel with only just over 17,000 views is a fantastic two-and-a-half minute video that beautifully matches this song to Mercedes’ racing pedigree both past and present, leveraging a truly global sporting ambassador for the brand in Lewis Hamilton.

It’s a wonderful piece of unofficial content and it stands out massively compared to other Mercedes ads at the moment. My first reaction - why haven’t I seen this before, it’s over a year old! As a male, F1 fan in his thirties this should surely be something that would have popped up in my social feed several times by now or I should have seen a shortened version of it on TV or at the cinema? Being in Asia shouldn’t affect that surely?

The answer? It isn’t on an official Mercedes channel – it’s the filmmaker’s own promotion of his content.

But it made me think: when was the last time I actually saw a Mercedes-Benz ad before I went Googling for one? It might simply be that I just don’t remember and that I’ve actually seen several. Yet I fear there may be more to it than that. In this automated, programmatic world it has made me wonder who Mercedes target audience are. My guess based on their actual current ads are people in the market to buy their cars RIGHT NOW – likely to be older and more affluent than I currently am. Therefore, they will be the only ones to see the ads. And that last click on the video or the search term that followed it which led to booking a test drive or finding the address of their nearest showroom will get all the credit for generating an interested customer. Yet my interest came about 20 years ago – so who’ll get the credit if I turn up unprompted to a Mercedes showroom?

Whilst the digital programmatic style of advertising will undoubtedly get a consumer like me to the right place if I ever do get to the stage of actually buying a Mercedes, where will that original affinity come from for the 10 year olds of today?

Which leaves a slight conundrum. Which of the above ads would I want to show a 10 year old? A 10 year old who in 30-40 years’ time might walk into a Mercedes showroom having used digital ads to confirm their selection bias – and will be interested in a Mercedes (potentially even a driverless one) rather than any other brands simply because they have a tune stuck in their head not quite remembering where it came from? The answer to me is obvious, the Mercedes-Benz marketing department must make amends.  

By Duncan Bell, senior strategist, Havas Media, Hong Kong. Follow him @dunkb12