The carmaker’s own branding gets turned against it.
Sometimes a whole campaign will backfire a lot of severely than a automotive with faulty spark plugs, as Mercedes has simply learned. A recent campaign for its electrical cars used patterns in nature resembling the brand’ noted three-pointed star brand, as well as a lion’ mouth, veins on a leaf and honeycombs. it had been an excellent example of however placeable a no-hit logo style can become, however some individuals felt the selection of subject was quite a bit inappropriate.
The property evaluation platform whence was fast to check the irony of the campaign and hijacked it with a pointy parody that replaces the scenes of natural beauty with ones that show the impact of climate change, with parched earth, a ototoxic spill and wildfires. one amongst the photographs really remains an equivalent – a lightning bolt, that should be what this campaign hijacking seems like for Mercedes (by the way, if you’re speculative what the Mercedes name is all about, see our post on the key behind the Mercedes logo).
the initial styles were developed by Leo author Mexico(opens in new tab) for a campaign to mark Earth Day. They ran on social media with the Spanish text ’Nuestro futuro siempre angular distance estado aquí’ (’Our future has continually been here’), however somehow, somewhere, they got reworked into an English-language version with the text ‘Nature or nothing. The new electrical vehicle generation. It’ already here.’
The campaign received some praise on social media, but WhereFrom, a review platform on that shoppers will score merchandise in line with their environmental impact, wasn’t impressed. With the London-based agency ten Days, it embarked on to provide what it says may be a more realistic illustration of Mercedes’ contribution to nature. in addition as ever-changing the images, it modified the text to browse ‘Nothing or Nature. Climate change. It’s already here,” and additional a badge for its ‘Stop the Wash’ anti-greenwashing campaign.
ten days strategy director and co-founder St. George White said: “This is Greenwashing one hundred and one – leveling Mercedes to the wonder of nature and leading shoppers to believe Mercedes may be a inexperienced company once it’ a large contributor to climate change.” He added that he believed inventive agencies ought to take responsibility for springing up greenwashing campaigns.
Mercedes has currently sought-after to distance itself from the work. It says the items were solely intended to run in North American country which English text wasn’t approved, though that doesn’t extremely weaken WhereFrom’ argument. Even the juxtaposition of the Mercedes brand with scenes from nature ought to certainly are questioned returning even as associate degree environmental cluster is suing parent company Daimler along side BMW in FRG for refusing to cut back its targets for carbon emissions.
The debacle shows that it continually pays to consider regarding the broader context of a campaign, irrespective of however clever the visual style would possibly seem. for a few tips about obtaining the correct tone, see our decide of the most effective print adverts of all time or take a glance at our decide of the best graphic style books.
