I was planning on doing a little diatribe on the new, fake, real advertising fad, but considering the mood of the blog today, it might make more sense to save that for another day. I don’t want to stir up too many hornet nests at once.

Instead, we’ll cover poor, poor Mercedes. Sales are slipping, brand luster is tarnished, and company moral is tanking. Their 10-year-old little experiment in “mobility for the masses,” the Smart Car, has yet to make money, and rich people are passing them over for Zeppelin-fueled Cadillacs. You know when Jimmy Page can sell more luxury cars than you, and American ones at that, you’re doing something wrong.

The brand, moreover, lost some of its cachet by introducing lower-priced models… owners of pricier Mercedes’ models like the S-Class found they disliked the broadened buyer base with lower-priced models like the entry-level C-Class hatchback.

Some cachet? When you can choose between a Mercedes and a really nice Camry, I’d say more than a little brand shine is gone. When was the last time you saw a rapper with a Mercedes hood ornament around his neck? Mercedes used to be an aspirational brand. The car your girlfriend’s dad had. The car you dreamed of buying when you made it. The car that could charge twice what it was worth, just because people wanted it so bad. By getting greedy and trying to be the car you actually could buy when you made it just a little, the whole hustle went right down the tubes. People want things just out of reach. Not what the assistant manager at Bennigan’s has.

Then there’s the question of whether Mercedes will seek a new U.S. agency. Two executives once close to the troubled automaker said Omnicom Group’s Merkley & Partners, New York, which got the account in 1999 without a review, is in trouble on the account; one gave 50/50 odds a review would be called.

50/50 odds, huh? Wow, it’s a good thing those executives spoke on the condition of anonymity.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 19th, 2005 at 4:46 pm and is filed under Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.