Mercedes-Benz Focuses Latest Safety Promotion on Owner Testimonies
![2011_CL600_03-web](https://www.autoremarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/2011_CL600_03-web.jpg)
Mercedes-Benz USA is letting owners talk about just how safe the automaker’s vehicles are.
This week, the manufacturer rolled out a series of online videos that contain unscripted accounts of real customers who survived horrific crashes in their Mercedes-Benz. The OEM dubbed the campaign “Impact.”
Some of the notable comments included in the short films are:
“I can’t believe we walked away."
“The fireman told me, ‘If you can live through that then I want my wife driving that car.’"
“I truly believe I owe that car my life and (my daughter’s) life."
“I decided I would never drive another car unless it was a Mercedes. The police told me I would have been dead in any other car."
“The car absorbed all the force. It saved our lives."
“I feel so strongly about it. It’s not just a pretty car — it will save your life."
“Everyone told me that it was our car that saved us — both insurance companies, the police, the people in the ambulance. That specific car is the reason we walked away."
“We’ve always been very loyal Mercedes customers, and after this accident we will never ever buy another brand of car.”
The company explained the videos are accessible via the MBUSA.com home page or directly at www.MBUSA.com/Impact. Once on the site, viewers can roll over the images to bring up the owners and then click to view their stories.
Mercedes-Benz stressed that each feature story includes additional content that “brings the owners, their families and their extraordinary circumstances to life.” Executives also mentioned three of the films were previewed on the Mercedes-Benz brand Facebook page, emphasizing they sparked a stream of similar experiences from other owners.
As a result, the automaker geared a segment of the video site as a “call to users.” The initiative invites other owners to submit their own Mercedes-Benz story of survival or newfound perspective.
The company indicated select owner-generated stories will be featured on a weekly basis at the MBUSA Facebook page. Versions of the site are also available for iPad and iPhone.
The campaign is a collaboration between MBUSA’s full-service marketing agency Merkley + Partners and its digital marketing agency Razorfish. The automaker said the videos were shot by documentary filmmaker Henry Corra.
Steve Cannon, vice president of marketing for MBUSA, elaborated about why the company launched this campaign.
“We literally have hundreds and hundreds of these experiences sent to us by our customers and we all agreed that we had to find a way to bring these experiences to life and share the stories of survival and perspective,” Cannon pointed out.
“We wanted the stories to be powerful but also authentic and, most of all, we wanted them to share the perspective that these people walked away with,” he concluded.