• by Karl Greenberg , October 4, 2010

Mercedes-Benz U.S.A. has lately eschewed the traditional luxury car approach (smug, slightly somnolent drivers, soft colors and horse farms) for real people recounting how Mercedes-Benz technology in their E-Class sedans helped them escape the automotive jaws of fate.

The latest incarnation of the company's real-owners approach is a Web-based campaign called "Profiles." The new brand effort comprises a series of extended three- to five-minute vignettes featuring real owners recounting in graphic and wrenching detail the accidents that should have killed them but from which they emerged relatively unscathed.

Steve Cannon, the Montvale, N.J.-based company's marketing VP, says the new efforts are based on the principle that people want to buy premium vehicles not only for the emotional value. "We have a fragile post-recessionary consumer with a 'let me sit on the sidelines' mindset. But the money is still there. We need to give them a real justification to buy Mercedes-Benz. We have to give them the right reasons."

They do, indeed, seem to be the right reasons. Mercedes-Benz's U.S. sales last month -- 20,666 vehicles -- were up by 22% both for the month and for the calendar year through September. The aforementioned E Class sedan, in its ninth generation, is Mercedes' volume king these days, with sales up 67% for the year and 47% for the month. Sales of the company's S-Class are up as well, by 55% for the month. Cannon says Mercedes has outperformed both the luxury market and the auto industry as a whole.

The new campaign comprises -- for the time being -- seven videos that show owners telling their stories, usually in their homes and surrounded by their spouses, parents, children, or others involved, fading to shots of the road, the crash scene, their totaled vehicle, and atmospheric shots of the regions in which they live.

One of the stories follows a California family -- a soccer player and his parents -- who were driving back from a soccer game on the freeway, doing around 70 mph, when they were hit head-on by a drunk driver going the same speed. Somehow, the family all survived, including the young man (no news on the drunk driver). The soccer player, who was driving, wound up pinioned in the vehicle -- his legs trapped -- and had to await "jaws of life" equipment to extricate him. There is a dramatic moment when he insists that his father leave the car and take care of his mother who had crawled out of the hulk. Long and short: he was playing soccer again the next day.

Some of the videos are hard to watch because of the emotional weight of the stories -- one woman was pregnant when, rear-ended at high speed, her car was hurled across several lanes of traffic. "The film crews were in tears themselves when they shot these," says Cannon. At the end of the story she tells the camera she insisted that they buy another E-Class car.

Cannon says the point of the stories is not so much to call out any single vehicle feature, but rather, "the whole safety philosophy that goes into the vehicles. There's almost this mentality that people who own the three-pointed star are paying for value of the brand. But [the message is] the premium is really in things like the high-strength steel Mercedes-Benz uses to build their vehicles. We want to debunk the idea that it's just about the brand, the nameplate."

He says the new online video series also evinces efforts to shift media focus to social media experimentation. "Suddenly, when you have YouTube that gets a million views or 10 million or a Facebook page with huge numbers of followers, you have a distribution model in which to tell stories. "You can't tell these kinds of stories in a 30-second commercial," he says. "Yes, there's a risk when we show torn-up sheet metal, but ultimately, it's a survival story."

Three of the stories began running as previews to the full campaign three weeks ago on Mercedes' Facebook page. The full seven videos will be showcased on MBUSA.com starting this month. Cannon says the effort includes a consumer content element wherein site visitors can upload their own stories. Mercedes actually started touting the program with 15-second teasers that ran during the U.S. Open. "We are looking at more ways to do that, using broad-exposure media to drive people to the more robust online stories," he says.