Best Marketing Ideas in the World

- Brandweek Staff

In 2005, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman famously declared that the "world is flat" in a book of that same name. We didn't get very far in that book, but the gist seemed to be that because of the Internet it is now much easier to get Indians to do your tedious white collar work for cheap. Or something like that. (Sorry, Tom, books are so, you know, 20th century.) It's really not much different for creative types. If people in Bangalore can file tax returns, what will stop them from coming up with the next Charmin campaign? Or, if a guerrilla marketing stunt works in Canberra or Oslo, who's to say it won't work in Baton Rouge, La., or Trenton, N.J.? Nothing, as smart companies well know. That's why Procter & Gamble, to name but one such company, makes a habit of scouring the globe to see what sticks and what stinks. But you don't need P&G's millions to play this game, just a good broadband connection. Maybe that's why marketers seem to be importing ideas much quicker than they used to. Dannon, for instance, made more than $100 million by betting that Americans would take to probiotic yogurt as well as Europeans have. Nokia in 2000 made a similar bet that the then-new art of mobile texting would also translate to U.S. shores. As the Beatles, Volkswagen and sushi show, importing good ideas is nothing new, but it used to be that we Yanks had a lock on creativity. That may still be the case (after all, we came up with Google, the iPod and Twinkies), but it seems more and more that creativity, like the World Cup, is an arena where the U.S. team is one of many (though, unlike in the game, we can still give Ghana a run for its money). Consider: Just these past few weeks we've seen Sony import a British TV ad for American audiences, escalator-based advertising pop up in select cities and a billboard that generates energy from a solar panel sprout in California. While the latter two ideas, originating in Australia and South Africa, are profiled here, the rest are, as far as we know, still up for grabs. To nail down the next great idea, we at Brandweek have fearlessly e-mailed the world's trouble spots and waited patiently for translations so that we can bring you what we're calling The Best Marketing Ideas in the World. If the world really is as flat as Friedman thinks, they should be coming to your corner of it any day now.



—A Brandweek Staff Report



Let It Ride

At a time when advertisements and brand logos adorn everything from cell-phone screens to the facades of Las Vegas high-rises to, well, even those deodorizing cakes at the bottoms of urinals, it's hard to think of a surface that has not become an ad platform.

Hard, that is, until you consider the escalator.

Throughout America's myriad malls, metros and megaplexes, escalator riders encounter only a cycling set of aluminum stairs—often scraped and besmirched—that convey them from one floor to the next. It's hardly the stuff of advertisers' dreams. But outside the U.S.—in countries like China, Korea, Russia and even Kuwait—it's obvious that advertisers have begun to view the motorized staircase quite differently. All those surfaces that seem useless at first glance—the retractable stair risers and the ubiquitous black rubber handrail belt—suddenly look like little billboards.

"It's an amazing medium in terms of reach," said Robert Patterson, co-founder of Aap!Global, San Francisco, a division of which, Aap!Rails, places ads on escalator handrails (the Aap!Steps division does the same thing on the vertical faces of the steps) in more than 11 countries worldwide.

There is, however, nothing particular about international locations that seems to make the method effective in a way it wouldn't be in the U.S. Escalator passengers represent a captive audience, one that pretty much has to stare at a strategically placed ad for the duration of the ride. Mall escalator advertising has the added advantage of many passengers who are already in a money-spending mood. Patterson added that escalator ads are also effective simply because they're colorful and engaging additions to a normally bland industrial conveyance. "We're not trying to make our ads intrusive," he said, "but rather to make people smile, and to make the machinery look better."

Upscale retailers might give him an argument on that one. Another drawback is that while handrail-belt advertising is always visible, ads placed on step risers can only been seen by passengers on their way up and not down. The medium is not uniformly effective.

Nonetheless, it's promising enough to have encouraged more companies than just Patterson's to get in on the action. Escalator Advertising Limited, a public company based in New Zealand, has installed escalator step-riser ads internationally for companies including Coca-Cola, The Body Shop, Kodak and Nike. Victoria, Australia's Escalated Advertising and MediaRails, Merseyside, England, are also in on the game, having landed clients including Oracle and Walt Disney's Pixar.

As the medium has matured, step-riser ads have also graduated from the straightforward placing of a company logo on each surface. For example, as part of a self-branding effort for the Yahoo! Dome, a baseball stadium in Fukuoka, Japan, Patterson's firm created a series of images, done in the Japanese comic book style known as Manga, that unfolded in segments to form a contiguous image visible if viewed from a vantage point in front of the escalator bank. The image reads "We=Hawks," a reference to the arena's home team, the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks.

Yet, perhaps the best argument for the medium's effectiveness can be seen in a promotion Aap!Rails did for Vodafone in Australia. Inside high-traffic malls in Sydney and Melbourne, the firm installed handrail-belt ads that bore messages like, "Turn left at the bottom of this escalator for hot mobile deals." The left turn brought mall-goers directly through the front doors of a Vodafone retail store. According to Patterson, store traffic climbed by as much as 120% as a result.

Can it be long before numbers like those bring escalator ads to the U.S.? In fact, they're here already. Aap!Rails recently rolled out an initiative with Oracle in select U.S. locations, the first of several to come. And, according to Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst with NPD Group, Port Washington, N.Y., there'll likely be many more to follow.

"We're going to see more and more common space become advertising space," he said, though whether consumers' shopping choices will be directly affected by escalator ads will depend. "Most will not even notice it," Cohen said, though "rail ads can make an impact. The consumer is in a relaxed state of stimulation while on an escalator, The [ad's] impact factor is greater in this environment." —Eric Newman



This Drink Is So Whatever

We've all heard of mystery meat (which is a bad thing). Now, there's mystery drinks (which are, according to early reports, a very good thing). Good in terms of taste, that is. In terms of marketing, well, they're different.

In May, a Singapore beverage maker aptly named Out of the Box launched two new brands: Whatever and Anything. Like most drinks they come in a variety of flavors. Now the kicker: You don't know which flavor you are getting until you open it and taste it. (Plot Spoiler Alert: You can make a damn good educated guess based on the ingredients printed on the side of the can).

The drink Anything is carbonated and comes in any of six flavors: cola, cola with lemon, root beer, apple, cloudy lemon and fizz up. Its partner Whatever is a line of noncarbonated teas (lemon, peach, jasmine green, white grape, apple and chrysanthemum). Most consumers will probably have a favorite; pity they won't know if they've just bought it or not.

As a marketing tactic, "It's pretty clever," said Gary Hemphill, managing director, Beverage Marketing, New York. "It could work [in the U.S.] as a novelty. It might not have such staying power, but it is unique enough to create some buzz."

It has done just that in Singapore. More than 3.5 million cans (which happens to be more than the population of Singapore) were sold in the first month. Johnson Tan, managing director of Out of the Box, considers that quite a feat.

"It is very tough for a new player to emerge into the drink market using the traditional way," he said. "Most of the market is taken up by the big boys. [But] with the curiosity and surprise elements, we were able to capture some market share."

Ken Sadowsky, president of Atlas Distributing, Auburn, Mass., believes that kind of reasoning is well grounded in the fact that consumers like to "discover" new brands. "Only in this case," he said, "they get to discover and discover and discover."

What's less certain is whether the same ploy would enchant U.S. consumers, or seriously try their patience. Certain brands like Snapple, AriZona or a "nimble upstart would have permission from consumers to do something like that," said Sadowsky. A company like Coca-Cola, he said, would not.

Despite the success of Whatever and Anything, some of the products' marketing was less than perfect. The company's display ads at 450 bus stops featured empty cans that for some reason people saw fit to tamper with by popping open. Once a little rainwater had accumulated, concerns were raised that the ads would draw the attention not of commuters but of dengue-fever-carrying mosquitoes. The company stated in a press release that it would do "anything and whatever" to address the situation. It did by taking the cans down.

In the meantime, TV, radio, print and anything.com.sg supports. The TV ad shows two tattooed hooligans harassing a store-owner. "Can you give me anything?" one demands. The frightened storeowner takes that literally and starts handing them money, lollipops, his shoe, etc. Tag: "Any taste for any thirst."

Unusual flavors are the norm in Asia, where one can find refreshments that include Cucumber Pepsi. "Japan is over the top," Hemphill added. In the States, however, "breakthrough innovation seems to be fairly elusive." That's not to say that drinks like Whatever and Anything couldn't work here, but the drinks are, in the words of Sadowsky, "a one-trick pony." Beverage Digest editor John Sicher also seems to hold a skeptical opinion. Asked for a quote about the viability of these beverages, he would only say, "whatever." —Kenneth Hein

Wag the Car

Going to the movies in England isn't really much different than doing it here in America. You buy a ticket and maybe a bucket of popcorn, take your seat and then wait for the previews. But visitors to 12 of London's Cineworld theaters the evening of Oct. 13, 2007, got to do a lot more than watch previews. All 500 audience members, at the same time, got to drive a new Volvo XC70.

"We didn't just want to use the cinema for standard advertising," said Luke Tipping, a planner at MindShare, Volvo's communications firm in the U.K. "We wanted to really shift brand perception and get consumers to think that we're a brand of dynamism and fresh thinking. So, we took cinema beyond spot advertising."

That, they did. Dubbed "Human Joysticks," Volvo's solution was a live, interactive game developed by New York-based Brand Experience Lab in which audience members—with a driver's-seat view of a curving country road on the screen—"steered" the virtual car by waving their arms to the left or right. Motion-sensor technology maneuvered the car by majority rule. By swerving clear of obstacles in the road, the crowd scored points. Since the promo ran in 12 theaters, there was a winning audience. Its members received free movie tickets.

The game was, of course, fun. But "Human Joysticks" had highly specific branding goals. Volvo Cars U.K. was in the midst of an effort to extricate itself from its stuffy image, while also trying to get across the message that the XC70 was a roomy family sedan. The result was the tagline, "Life is Better Lived Together," which the interactive cinema game supported experientially. Not only was the movie theater an obvious social locus, Volvo marketers staged the game at showings of Ratatouille, a film sure to draw many families.

"We wanted to create a game around Volvo cars, but one which the crowd could interact with," said Paul Adrian, business growth director at ad agency Nitro, London. Added Tipping: "It's all very well to have a tagline, but the brand ambition was to become a facility of togetherness."

Which, in the U.K., is apparently easier said than done. "We're a lot more reserved as a nation than you are," Adrian said. "In our culture, [we were afraid that] people would just sit on their hands." Fortunately for Volvo, people didn't, and the press generated by "Human Joysticks" was a marketing coup at least on par with the positive impressions created among theatergoers.

"Human Joysticks" was actually the fruition of an earlier experiment with the same technology, tried out this past summer in America. Here, the audience played an on-screen videogame similar to Pong prior to the screening of Spider-man 3. The crowd's hand motions controlled the movement of a pad off which a ball ricocheted. For Brand Experience Lab CEO Barry Grieff, the results of both installations proved that audience-interactive gaming is a branding vehicle that will see many more marketing applications in the future, irrespective of international borders.

"Our opinion is that the world is moving toward participation," he said. "This is an example of a simple application where [the audience doesn't] need controllers and hardware. It's understood right from the beginning."

Understood, sure, but the big question remains: Amid all the fun it's having, does the audience associate the game with the brand sponsoring it? Grieff's research—conducted by questioning audience members after the conclusion of the films—yielded results worth pondering.

Following "Human Joysticks" in London, a remarkable 71% of moviegoers recalled that the virtual car they'd driven was a Volvo. "And that was two and a half hours after the game was played," Grieff added. The research also revealed the audiences that play interactive games prior to movies tend to like the movies shown after the games better than those who don't, which theoretically expands the marketing potential of this technology beyond a sponsoring brand to include theaters and film companies themselves. "After the games, people were in a better frame of mind," Grieff said. "This worked better than any commercial."

In the near-term, however, Tipping said "Human Joysticks" achieved immediate results for Volvo because it turned what was just a brand into a social entity. "Brands are boring when they're not part of popular culture," he said. "We wanted Volvo to be talked about. And we got plenty of that." —Robert Klara



Lifestyles of the Rich and Turkish

Procter & Gamble is not the first company to assert that the consumer is the boss, but it may be the first to literally roll out the red carpet for the consumer. At least that's how it worked in Turkey last November, where P&G decided to give Pantene shampoo sales a jolt by treating ordinary women like film stars. P&G had introduced Pantene to Turkey back in 1992 and it leads the shampoo category in that country with an 18% share of the market, according to P&G rep Yaprak Gökbulut.

But the brand had issues. "Pantene's biggest trial barrier in Turkey was a weak emotional bonding with the consumers," Gökbulut said. Shampoo isn't an emotional subject for most people, but women tend to feel strongly about their hair. "Having beautiful hair is the first step of feeling good about themselves," Gökbulut said. She added that feeling beautiful is also a way to break out of the workaday routine.

"The core strategic idea was to show them that 'Pantene brings the true potential of each woman, enabling the best of them to shine through'" Gökbulut said. That positioning was reinforced by TV and print ads, but the company decided to take it even further with an experiential component.

For three months, P&G infiltrated shopping malls, theater entrances and supermarkets, implementing custom elements sure to take the average shopper by surprise. Women entering a mall, for example, were chased by fake paparazzi scrambling to take their photos. (Brad and Angelina may complain about such things, but to most of us, it would be a novel and flattering experience.) For the female consumer who went to the movie theater, P&G rolled out the red carpet—literally—to imitate a film premiere. Meanwhile, in supermarkets, the company printed average consumers' faces on custom "magazines" to make them instant cover girls.

Gökbulut said the campaign was a remarkable success for Pantene. Three months after it started, Pantene's unaided brand awareness increased by 12%, purchase intent jumped 6%, a "this brand makes me feel confident" attribute score rose 4% and an "I love this brand" attribute was up 8%. The beauty of the campaign, Gökbulut said, was that it was simply average, everyday Turkish consumers who made it a success. Nevertheless, she knows of no other marketer who's tried anything similar.

John Palumbo, founder of New York experiential marketing shop BigHeads Network, said that while Pantene's Turkey program was "a little over the top" its instant-celebrity appeal means it could well work in the U.S. just as well. Palumbo related that he's staged similar efforts for Oral-B and Remy where he's brought camera crews to public places like bars and found consumers gravitated to the bright lights like moths: "I told the clients if you want to do sampling, we don't even have to have film in the camera." —Todd Wasserman



Real German Engineering

Like death, airports are the great equalizer. A passenger holding a first-class ticket may well stroll into the terminal in his Bruno Magli loafers, looking forward to the frosty mimosa that the flight attendant will hand him the second he's sitting in his first-class, lie-flat seat. But nothing will save him from standing on that long security line behind the cabin-class riffraff. Yes, some airlines can't do enough for their wealthy customers, just like they can't do anything to ease the agony of the ground experience.

Unless that customer's in Europe and also is a member of Lufthansa's Private Jet program.

In a roughly year-old partnership with NetJets, a fractional jet-ownership firm, the German carrier is able to whisk passengers from its hubs in Frankfurt, Munich and Zurich to any one of 1,000 airports around Europe in serious style aboard private planes. But if it's any measure of just how infuriating airport protocols have become, the marketing muscle for LPJ isn't only the amenities offered at 33,000 feet, it's what you get down on the ground: No hassles. At Lufthansa's new Frankfurt terminal, opened in 2005, LPJ flyers have their own cadre of customs and security personnel to process them with respect and speed (in addition, of course, to perks such as lounges with laptop connections). Separate passport and security stations also operate at the Munich and Zurich facilities.

According to Marcus Casey, Lufthansa's director of marketing and customer relations for the Americas, what the company is offering to lure first-class passengers in Europe is "a logical extension of what we are offering in the air. We're bringing the brand experience [to] the ground."

Which means the marketing isn't in the pitch, but in the amenities. A Mercedes S-Class or Porsche Cayenne whisks LPJ passengers to and from the airport. As for bags . . . what bags? Luggage is checked to the final destination so Private Jet clients don't have to bother with transfers or baggage claim. For one fixed price, customers can select the jet they fly, the onboard menu, reading material and departure time. There is no complicated leasing or charter jet contract to sign and if passengers bring a guest onboard the private jet, there's no extra charge.

Not that there isn't a hefty charge to start with. Each local hop within Europe can cost a LPJ member around $5,000. Still, according to Casey, the pricey marketing package "has helped us acquire quite a few new groups of customers." Plus, she added, "it's given us that kind of extended reach into luxury travel that we never had."

Too bad the reach probably won't extend to travelers in American airports. While the U.S. has no shortage of people who could afford LPJ, Casey explained that the airport infrastructure is too disorganized to allow Lufthansa to guarantee the same seamless ground experience it can promise in Europe. —Mike Beirne



Wrap Music

No matter what country it's released in, a marketing campaign devoted to the topic of condom use and HIV/AIDS isn't an easy one to develop. Grave and didactic spots tend to get ignored; outright humor risks eroding the message's seriousness. To the American eye, it might look as though the Nrityanjali Academy, a nongovernmental public-health organization based in Andhra Pradesh, India, opted for the latter approach. After all, four men dressed as multicolored condoms who go skipping and singing their way through a rural village looks a lot more like something out of Saturday Night Live than a guide to Saturday night safe sex.

In point of fact, however, the Nrityanjali Academy's approach was wholly straightforward and nowhere near as funny as it looks. While the academy is not exactly a brand, its public-health message faced an obstacle similar to one that challenges many an American marketer: getting a serious message across to a population that's neither educated nor inclined to listen to prolonged, instructive messaging. Its solution was a video for which Nrityanjali's project director, P. Narsing Rao, has a very Western-sounding name: Infotainment.

"The video was created to reach out to female sex workers, the migrant population, youth in the slums" and similarly underprivileged social groups, said Rao. To get these populations to listen to a message about condom use to prevent the spread of HIV and STDs, the Nrityanjali Academy elected to play a riff on an Indian ("Bollywood") movie. Not only do India's Bombay-produced films enjoy enormous national popularity across nearly all social strata, they feature a number of common dramatic elements that the Nrityanjali video also incorporated. In India's hyper-theatrical films, stars frequently break into musical numbers with information-rich lyrics that advance the plot. Dancing and elaborate costuming are also staples.

So when the men dressed as condoms proceed to sing and do fancy footwork in Nrityanjali's video, the content isn't funny; it runs straight down a well-worn cultural groove.

"To keep this population's concentration and give proper information, [the approach] cannot be boring," Rao said. "The issues of HIV and STDs have to be told through entertainment, so we developed this video and its songs."

The condom quartet's repertoire totals eight songs, each with a message that systematically builds a safe-sex message much like a movie builds its plot. The first tune addresses how HIV is transmitted, while song No. 4 warns about the shame a person with HIV will bring upon his family. (American marketers would likely opt for a much shorter program, and also frown on the use of stigma, shame and rejection as motivational messages.)

Another key difference between Nrityanjali's marketing approach and an American one: The singing and dancing was not performed by professionals; everyone in the film is an Academy employee.

—Eric Newman



One Powerful Message

"Outdoor billboards [are] the ugly duckling of advertising [and] are often seen as the biggest perpetrator of crimes against urban landscapes. Here's our chance to lead the world in showing how we can convert urban pollution into urban renewal."

With that frank analysis, Mike Schalit, creative chief at Net#work BBDO, Johannesburg, South Africa, explained the reasoning behind one of the most unusual billboards to rise in public view—one successful enough that a U.S. company just built one of its own.

Created for Nedbank Group, the billboard devotes part of its surface area to solar cells. The sign's message—"What if a bank really did give power to the people?"—is more than just a plug for financial services, however; Nedbank means it literally. The cells feed electrical power directly to the kitchens of the MC Weiler School in Alexandra, on whose property it stands. The school saves an estimated $300 a month (U.S.) in electricity bills as it feeds 1,100 kids daily. Because MC Weiler educates the children of low-income families, Nedbank has essentially found a way to make a public, measurable contribution to charity while imparting a brand message at the same time. Not bad for one billboard.

"South Africa is facing a severe energy crisis," said Nombulelo Moholi, Nedbank's director of group strategy and corporate affairs. "There is [also] a growing awareness of the dire need for creative solutions to address our impact on the environment. [This is] a small, yet effective way to address both of these complex issues."

The current solar billboard actually expands on a prior effort. In June 2006, as part of its "Make things happen" campaign, Nedbank (again, with lead agency Net#work BBDO) erected a 14.5- x 59-foot double-sided billboard with 10 solar panels, which charge 20 105-amp deep cell batteries for Weiler, which used the 5,800 watts for lighting.

Aside from the literal benefits to the school, the solar billboard proved to be a bright marketing idea, too, according to Schalit. "Why shouldn't advertising . . . pioneer ways of putting something back into the community?" he said. Of course, while it's easy to measure wattage generated by the sign, measuring the ROI is a little tougher. But the effort did enhance Nedbank's image as being a "green" marketer.

Meanwhile, the marketing benefits to green billboards appear to have been noticed stateside. Last week, California's Pacific Gas and Electric unveiled its—and the nation's—first solar-powered billboard, very likely to give a jolt to domestic utility marketing. —Barry Janoff



The Best Marketing Ideas in the World—Honorable Mentions

Brandweek’s roundup of the best-conceived marketing outside U.S. borders has borders of its own, but two efforts that didn’t make the cut still bear mentioning. As one is a celebrity endorsement and the other a branded cell-phone ring tone, it can’t exactly be said that these are the newest ideas going—but their conceptions are fresh and innovative for their respective markets. With enough imitators, even these ideas might get old pretty fast in the countries in which they’re running. But for now, they seem to have turned a few heads (or ears, as the case may be.)



CHERRY ON TOP

It’s common enough for American celebrities to plug American products. Ample enough is Hollywood’s celebrity stock that some of ours even show up plugging products overseas (witness Brad Pitt’s appearance in a Japanese commercial for Roots coffee). But the role-swapping orchestrated by the Northwest Cherry Growers, Yakima, Wash., warrants some attention: An American-grown product sold in a foreign country, using that foreign country’s celebrity—but on American soil. Got it?

Local celeb plugs are nothing new for Asia, but they apparently are for China, where the free-marketing economy itself is something of a child star. In 2007, the Growers (whose output represents close to 70% of all cherries sold in the world) began marketing their cherries in China with the help of Chinese pop star Jian Tian. The timing, if you will, was ripe: Tian had recently filmed a music video in the Northwest’s orchards, and so easily became the spokesperson for the fruit in her own country.

“Stars influence consumers and a lot of people want to have the luxury items,” said Teresa Baggarley, international program coordinator for the Northwest Cherry Growers. In much of Asia, this goes beyond what you clothe your body in; what you put inside it—presumably, including cherries imported from the United States—also says a lot about one’s status.

The Northwest Growers’ decision to take their message directly to China using a Chinese star is also no accident of timing. Household incomes are growing steadily there, creating a morphing middle class that, apart from its well publicized taste for automobiles, also seeks status through what it puts on the dinner table at home. “We brand ourselves as the diamond of fruit, the affordable luxury,” said Baggarley.

The big marketing push behind Washington’s cherries only began eight years ago, but it’s paying off: Sales have soared 63% in the past five years.

The Northwest Cherry Growers isn’t the only organization enjoying a sales boom in Asia. It’s the top export destination for all soft Washington fruits, according to B.J. Thurlby, president of the Washington State Fruit Commission, also in Yakima, Wash.

The commission is also playing the celebrity game and recently partnered with Chateau Ste. Michelle winery to hold a black tie event featuring pop star Shunza. The event, held in Shanghai in August, attracted 3,000 people.

Celebrity promotions work in China and Taiwan, Thurlby explained, although the focus in Taiwan is slightly different. “It’s more of a gossip-driven market, so we focus on the gossip magazines and the subways,” he said.

--Amanda Chater



LORD OF THE RING

When Mercedes Benz launched its European campaign for its C-Class, called “C-for Yourself,” its marketers had to take the road less traveled—at least compared with the American approach. Here, the sedan’s selling points were chic design, smooth performance and, of course, the prestige of the three-pointed star. But in Europe, countless high-performance sedans already prowl the autobahns, where Mercedes is not exactly a rarified nameplate. So when it came down to turning on serious drivers to this luxury compact, Mercedes’ marketers chose to stress one thing: Power.

But aside from spouting engine statistics—which every automaker will do anyway—how can a marketing package convey the notion of power in a way visceral enough to make an impression? In the case of Mobile Special, the C-Class’ European campaign via Proximity, Hamburg, it meant allowing consumers to download a digital recording of a C-Class engine in full rev mode for use on their cell phones. “Not a ring tone,” corrected a Mercedes rep., “but an engine sound.” (Yes, of course; ring tones are so teenager.)

“With mobile marketing, we are mainly targeting young, technology affined and very mobile potential customers with the right purchase power,” said Dr. Olaf Goettgens, vp-brand communications, Mercedes-Benz Cars. “These target groups often are not reachable via classic communication channels. They, for example, travel a lot and use different media because of their professions.”

Mercedes drove consumers to the C-Class site and made them aware of the downloadable software via a presence on Vodafone Live and business portals including Financial Times, Deutschland, Faz.net and Spiegel online. Mercedes research found that close to 33% of participants in the Mobile Special downloaded something.

High-tech and well targeted as the revving cell-phone ring may be, however, according to Peter DeLorenzo, a former ad writer for the auto industry and now the publisher of the popular blog autoextremist.com, it has its limits as a marketing tool. “You are talking about a really limited niche,” he said. “Still, in Europe, there’s a lot of emphasis on fast driving, and Mercedes has been trying to track these young enthusiasts there.”

Trying to track them, it should be noted, with a gimmick that’s not new. Both Harley Davidson and the Ford Mustang had offered revving-engine ringtones stateside. Harley charged $3 for the sound via its Web site; the ’06 Pony Car rev—just like the C-Class Mercedes—was free.
--Steve Miller