Can you believe the gall of Mercedes-Benz with their new commercials? The ones showing old clips of historic Mercedes, and a voice-over telling you to get to know more about the history of a car before you buy it?
For a company that had a president who was an active member of the Nazi Party, and which used slave labor from concentration camps in its factory (M-B was one of the most notorious, there were even unproven rumors they used Jews in their crash tests), to bring up its past is not the brightest PR move in the world . . .
What’s next? VW ads with a proud Hitler unveiling the first model? “Aryans . . . I mean, DRIVERS wanted!”
Eve, I had that reaction, too. One thought: the ad campaign was probably designed by an agency team made up of 20 and 30-somethings who have barely heard of WWII. This is not meant to be an excuse. I think that the lack of historical sense that most people have is inexcusable.
I have not seen this yet, but you can be sure that I will shamelessly steal your thoughts the first time it comes on in front of myself and the VERY Jewish Mrs. Cynical.
You know what else bugs me about this commercial? It is something that I have seen in other “historic” type commercials. They don’t actually used much or even any historic footage, they shoot new footage using vintage automobiles to make it look like it is old footage. They invariably want to add some comtemporary theme to the footage that didn’t actually exist in vintage footage so they recreate it with their subtle references to the current theme. I realize it is a commercial but touting a heritage and not ever showing true documentation of the heritage seems a bit tacky.
Random, you’re probably right—but wouldn’t someone at M-B have had to OK the campaign? Maybe the 40s-something execs there were afraid to say to the 60-somethings, "Um, weren’t we indicted for Nazi war crimes? Maybe we shouldn’t invite people to look INTO our past . . "
I think Wanderer’s got the key…M-B doesn’t want people to know about its REAL past, they want people to believe in a past they are cooking up with their advertising/promotion people!
Through clever use of models, vintage cars, split-screen techniques, and airplane glue, Mercedes-Benz hopes to emerge, phoenix-like, as brave membairs of zee Franch Resistance, subverting Hitler’s regime from within.
I can’t really go along with the rest of you on this. I certainly don’t defend Mercedes Benz association with the Nazis, but I don’t really know the best way for the company to deal with it 50 years after the fact. The Smithsonian struggled for years to find an appropriate and respectful way to display the Enola Gay (the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima), and that was an action many people felt was justified. I can’t think of any gesture, any apology, any reparations that wouldn’t be insultingly trivial.
I would ask Mercedes (now Daimler-Chrysler) to preserve their records from the era, and make them available to anyone who wants to document the era or search for missing relatives. I also hope they’d be the first ones to fight against it if anything like this even begins to happen again. But they have an engineering heritage that goes back to the 1880s, most of it independent of the Nazis, and I don’t really have a problem with them using the better part of their history in their commercials.
Wait, wanderer is accusing commericials of being tacky. What’s next accusing them of trying to influence us to buy things? Of course they are tacky, what the fuck do you expect. They are fuckign commercials for god’s sake.
Lord help me when Americans start having expectations about what should be in a commercial.
On a cherrier note, I once found this site of failed ad ideas. Really funny stuff. All real ads posted by admen who had their ideas shot down.
The best was an ad for the beatles special on ABC. It said “they said it would take 3 more bullets, we were able to do it on TV” Or something like that. It made me laugh my ass off. Does anyone know the URL for this site? I’ve lost it .
And I read today that documents have been unconvered that show that the White house was built by slaves who were paid $5 a month, those monies were then stolen from them by their “owners”. Where did I put that freakin’ paper?
Glass houses and all.
Heaven knows we all have ancestors who did abominable things to other people.
Canada has a rich history of oppressing groups of people, the First Nations and Japanese during world war two come to mind…
Come on, you think the CEO of Mercedes Benz said “Let’s go and kill some Jews, Russians and Poles.”? You should be more pissed off at VW then. The whole VW idea was thought up by Hitler. All industries in Germany went along with the whole Nazi thing, whether voluntarily or not, and they’re getting punished now,
Robot and Major—I have nothing against the people who run Mercedes and VW NOW. When I see a Mercedes I don’t think “Nazi!” Though my mother still calls VWs “Hitlermobiles.” I just think it’s incredibly dumb of Mercedes to INVITE us to peer into their dark, skeleton-packed closet in their new commercials (I saw one last night, by the way, and at least 50% of the footage seems to be legit old film).
By the way, Drain, I didn’t mean to call you “Darin.” What I meant, of course, was “Durwood.”
I suppose it’s a risk, but they do have quite a history among car buffs. A lot of people regard the Benz Patentmotorwagen (1886, I think) as the precursor to all modern cars. And Mercedes dominated European racing in the 30s (played up by the Nazi propagandists) and early 50s.
There was another incident that they’re probably not anxious to talk about. In the 24 Hours of LeMans in 1955, one of their cars crashed into the grandstand, killing 80 spectators. The accident was caused by another car, so I don’t think anybody ever blamed Mercedes, but after the tragedy they withdrew from racing for 30 years.
From a product-positioning standpoint (God, did I really use those words?), I don’t know if the ads are bold statement or utter folly; grand spectacle or not worth the trouble.
