Kuv Her
Writing 1
Tanvi Patel
November 14, 2012
BMW vs. Mercedes-Benz
Cars are used for transporting humans, products, or even other cars. Cars help build and
bring up innovations and also produce success for their company. Some cars are best known for
their looks, performance, or their expense such as a Mercedes or a BMW. Mercedes-Benz and
wBayeriche Motoren Werke best known as BMW are two of the top car manufacturing and
vehicle related businesses that sell top design and performance cars like sedans, sports, mini, and
SUVs all around the world. To sell these cars they use commercials and advertisements to either
persuade or try to get a message through to the buyers to make them buy the product. Both
companies are two very successful car manufacturing businesses, but BMW has the upper hand
in being more successful than Mercedes-Benz. In this case, which commercials and
advertisements connects to the buyers better and have a scenario where consumers can relate to
more made that commercial campaign successful. Since BMW was able to use their imagination
to make creativity, simplicity, and entertaining commercial they were able to create a scenario
that buyers can relate too making them more successful. BMW is more successful because in
their commercial campaigns and advertisements they focus more on family life and specific
gender that relates to the consumers.
BMW is more successful because they connect to the buyers through family life by using
a scenario where every American family would want. For example, in the video commercial call
“The Entertainer” there is a family that has a mother, a father, and two children where they are
having a fun and laughing at the oldest child running around the car making funny faces. By
having a happy family that has lots of laughter spending time in the car creates a relation to the
buyers that are parents with children. For Mercedes all they do is put on some music and show
off the car’s nice design and the style of the car saying that this is the perfect car. Another reason
that makes BMW more successful is because when they do a commercial they target specific
buyers. For example, in their same commercial “The Entertainer” there might be a family, but
the target is the father in the family because while the wife and kids are laughing he is just
staring at them laughing hoping that this moment doesn’t end. The main message here is to all
men that are fathers or grandfathers telling them that if they want to make their family happy
then all they have to do is buy a BMW. This creates a generating necessity for the buyers.
Another reason to BMW being more successful than Mercedes-Benz because they make their
commercial to appeal to men more than women because male have more desires than women in
cars. In a BMW’s commercial call “Beautiful Woman” they had a very beautiful woman and this
makes BMW successful because the woman represent one of the man’s desires where by buying
a BMW car he can get what he want like the beautiful woman. This connect to most man that
wants to have a beautiful woman relating to mostly all the men in America.
BMW uses the market and commercials to achieve consumers’ desires whether it can be
a beautiful woman, a happy family, or just entertainment. By creating memorable, creative, and
entertaining commercials they were able to accomplish these desires. In relation with the article
“Jesus Is a Brand of Jeans,” by Jean Kilbourne where they use the method of using the market to
create a belief of happiness to generate success, whereas in BMW’s commercials they used the
car to represent the belief of happiness accomplishing an individual buyer’s desires. By using
this method BMW is not just selling a product but also a feeling. As for Mercedes they use the
method of just selling a product where it doesn’t have any kind of feeling for the buyers to
connect to. In relation to another article call “The Hard Shell: Advertisement in America,” by
Bill Bryson where Bryson describe that to be successful all you need is a simple, catchy, and
memorable advertisement, where BMW uses this method to make their commercials so it would
be entertaining, creative, and memorable to promote innovations based on longevity. Using these
methods in their commercials generates success for BMW based on longevity and the belief of
happiness. Mercedes uses the method of a catchy and simple commercial where they have a
simple catchy phrase and music, but this doesn’t create a memorable commercial. This is why
BMW is much more successful in their commercials against Mercedes because they not just
make it simple and catchy, but entertaining with a connection to the consumers too.
Mercedes-Benz and BMW has been going against each other to see which one can
produce the best cars and make more profit from their products. In the article “The Ultimate
Fairly Inexpensive Driving Machine,” by Alex Taylor III he explains BMW’s plan of making
their cars more cost effective and space effective. They plan to change their strategy of being
specialize in producing just sport cars and transformed their old strategy of produce high quality
expensive cars to produce and sell inexpensive type of cars such as the mini vans, hatchbacks,
sedans, and SUVs to make a bigger and quicker success for BMW. In another article call
“German Throw down: BMW vs. Mercedes-Benz,” by Matt Vella, explains ta BMW is making
more money and is not struggling with finance problems like Mercedes-Benz. However
Mercedes does make good quality cars too, but by the way they advertise their cars it does not
connect to a broader consumers where everyone can relate to. Because of this they did not meet
up to the analyst’s expectations of the product’s profit. As for BMW they does not have finance
problems, because they meet the analyst expectations and their pretax profits had raise 57.7
percent making them the world’s largest premium car maker company.
Both BMW and Mercedes-Benz are top car manufacturer competitive around the world,
but because of the memorable, creative, and entertaining commercial campaigns made by BMW
makes them the most successful car manufacturer in the world. With the method of selling a
feeling with the product and giving the buyers a belief of happiness to fulfill their desires
generates a necessity for their product makes them more successful than Mercedes-Benz.
Works Cited
1. "BMW 3 Series - The Close Call." YouTube. YouTube, 01 Feb. 2012. Web. 14 Nov. 2012.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOBU5dEUfVg>.
2. "BMW Ultimate Service - Beautiful Woman." YouTube. YouTube, 18 July 2012. Web. 14
Nov. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZGaFsYJWo0>.
3. "BMW 3 Series - The Entertainer." YouTube. YouTube, 01 Feb. 2012. Web. 14 Nov. 2012.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nwyoqnl8j4w>.
4. MercedesBenzTV. "Mercedes-Benz TV: Mercedes-Benz Spot 'Amy'" YouTube. YouTube, 10
Apr. 2012. Web. 14 Nov. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er10X1FyjdM>.
5. MercedesBenzTV. "Mercedes-Benz.tv: B-Class Commercial 'Thanks, Airbag'" YouTube.
YouTube, 17 Jan. 2012. Web. 14 Nov. 2012.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWNYKXBx-K4>.
6. Taylor III, Alex. "THE ULTIMATE FAIRLY INEXPENSIVE DRIVING MACHINE."
Academic Search Complete. EBSCO, 1 Nov. 2004. Web. 14 Nov. 2012.
<http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=0ec5e693-6902-4425-a2eac3fd8dc92a82%40sessionmgr15&vid=1&hid=28&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ
%3d%3d#db=bth&AN=14770306>.
7. Vella, Matt. "German Throwdown: BMW vs. Mercedes-Benz." Academic Search Complete.
EBSCO, 5 May 2006. Web. 14 Nov. 2012.
<http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=06b31b3b-e614-4cf0-bf26e1ca28b21b5b%40sessionmgr112&vid=1&hid=126&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2
ZQ%3d%3d#db=bth&AN=20830449>.
8. Bryson, Bill. “The Hard Sell: Advertising in America.” Language Awareness 10th Edition.
Eds. Eschholz, Rosa, Clark. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin. 2009. 424-436. Print.
9. Kilbourne, Jean. “Jesus Is a Brand of Jeans.” Language Awareness 10th Edition. Eds.
Eschholz, Rosa, Clark. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin. 2009. 466-471. Print.