CASE STUDY
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Mercedes-Benz Moves Ahead with
Breakthrough Multi-Screen Advertising
In September 2013, Mercedes-Benz launched a transformative automobile, the CLA,
into the highly competitive USA luxury market. With an attractive $29,900 starting
price, youthful styling, and a sporty ride, the CLA was aimed at bringing a new
generation of luxury car buyers to Mercedes-Benz. Strategically, the launch was
critically important to the long-term success of the brand, as luxury car buyers tend to
stay with a brand and move up to larger, more expensive vehicles, as they grow older
and more affluent.
The launch was a roaring success. As reported in Bloomberg News, Mercedes-Benz
sales rose 15% in October 2013 over last year. Impressively, this increase was triple the
growth for the category leader BMW.
While Jivox certainly contributed to this success by building and serving multi-screen
advertisements, the bigger story is that we were a vital technology partner to a terrific
marketing and agency team.
The Campaign
To reach the desired Millennial market (drivers between the ages of 21 and 34),
Mercedes-Benz USA needed breakthrough creative with smart multi-screen media
placements. The campaign, which launched in September, had to both grab the target
audience’s attention AND convince them that Mercedes-Benz could be attractive for
younger drivers.
Razorfish, the creative agency, met the challenge with arresting digital advertising to
capture the attention and enthusiasm of young drivers. They developed a highly
creative campaign, which utilized eight different formats in over 12 sizes, including:
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HTML5 Rich Media ads
Flash Rich Media ads
Pencil size ads that “pushed down” to larger units
Interstitial ads
Pre-roll videos
An example of a Pencil-sized ad that pushed down into a larger unit.
Noteworthy, the digital ads included sophisticated techniques, such
as syncing multiple ad units so a CLA could drive across the webpage. In addition, Razorfish developed a “never been done before”
promotion with Instagram where viewers could vote on posts from
five top Instagrammers. (The highest vote getter won a new
Mercedes-Benz CLA.)
Concurrently, Merkley + Partners developed a strong media plan that
utilized marquis properties, including the websites: Car + Driver, CNN
Money, ESPN, The New York Times, and Glamour. They negotiated
premium positions and exclusive sponsorships.
Almost all ads delivered performance metrics that were much higher
than industry averages. Importantly, over 20% of the impressions
were viewed on mobile devices and all were viewed as high-impact,
fully functioning ad units rather than static images.
The campaign featured content from top Instagrammers.
Jivox Solutions
Jivox was selected primarily because of our multi-screen capabilities.
We worked closely with both Razorfish and Merkley + Partners to deliver their
vision and plans. It was a team effort with Jivox often in the center of
communication and coordination.
Along the way, we helped solve issues
and deliver impressive results, including:
• Rapidly produced multiple formats and sizes using Jivox “build once publish to
many” platform.
• Created ads in both HTML5 and Flash; then embedded a “smart tag” into each to
detect and switch to the right version and size for each device.
• Solved the problem of Flash-based ads not running on mobile devices by
automatically transcoding Flash files into HTML5.
• Developed custom ad units that integrated with Instagram, displayed gallery of
images, and let engaged viewers vote and share to social networks.
• Provided detailed reports on performance across all screens with advanced
analytics on engagement measurements.
The ads displayed a gallery of Instagram photos
For more information, please
contact: sales@jivox.com