The automotive industry and celebrities are made for each other — a marketing match that makes as much sense as peanut butter and jelly or Kraft Dinner and ketchup.
We all remember these memorable commercials — Ricardo Montalbán showcasing the ‘Corinthian leather’ in Chrysler cars, Brie Larson showing the ‘fun’ in Nissan, or Christopher Walken showing off the BMW 5-series during last year’s Super Bowl — they helped put a face or a tagline on a specific product.
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As cars evolve, automakers are keen to focus on technology, embracing the idea that a car can be as helpful as a digital gadget as the latest smartphone.
However, a quirky, new star-studded ad from Mercedes-Benz (MBGAF) may have unknowingly shown off some of the pitfalls of the cool new tech that comes with the latest new cars.
In a two-minute video advertisement dubbed “In Her Shoes” shown on Mercedes’ social media channels, Antonio Banderas is employed to show off the personalization functions of the Mercedes Me application in the brand-new E-Class sedan.
In the ad, the actor of “Desperado” fame is handed the keys to his daughter Stella’s new E-Class. Upon entering her Mercedes MePIN on the vehicle’s touch screen, the car’s virtual assistant greets ‘Stella,’ continuing to guide Antonio into a day in his daughter’s life by navigating him to various places around the undisclosed city.
These places include a drive-through coffee shop, a nail salon, a nightclub (where the bouncer hilariously fails to recognize the “Spy Kids” actor), and her favorite restaurant. The ad ends with Mr. Banderas bringing home some take-out for Stella, who asks him how he knew of her favorite eatery.
Though the tagline of this advertisement is “Knows your day. Drives your way,” the ad does not serve solely as one for just the E-Class, but also to show off the ‘advanced’ capabilities of Mercedes’ technology.
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In a release accompanying the launch of this ad campaign, Mercedes denotes that the ad is meant to demonstrate how the car can “adapt [to] its owner’s habits” by “intuitively [guiding] Antonio [Banderas] to familiar places,” in turn allowing him to discover “a few things about his daughter he didn’t know before.”
“Driving Stella’s E‑Class felt like stepping into her world for a day. The extent of the possibilities for personalization and interaction of this vehicle is truly impressive,” Antonio Banderas said in a Mercedes press release for the ad campaign.
“Just like Mercedes‑Benz, I am very much convinced that a car today should be more than just a means of transport: it’s turning into a digital companion, a personal space in which its owners can feel completely at ease. With the innovative technologies in the E‑Class, this no longer wishful thinking but already a reality.”
At first glance, this quirky ad is meant to poke fun at classic father-daughter dynamics, including generational and cultural, exemplified by his reaction to a matcha drink at the coffee shop and the encounter with the nightclub door bouncer. But in reality, Mercedes showing off that it intuitively knows one’s habits is ultimately a flagrant display of how much data it collects from you.
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Mercedes-Benz’s privacy track record isn’t very great
According to a report from the Mozilla Foundation’s Privacy Not Included project, the Mercedes Me service shown off in the Banderas’ E-Class ad is a privacy nightmare for its owners, noting that it collects a lot of data on you and your car.
The researchers at Mozilla found that in the privacy documentation that many owners gloss over, skip, and hit accept or agree, Mercedes collects “information reflecting your preferences, characteristics, predispositions, behavior, attitude, and any other inferences drawn from your personal information.”
This can also include information like your name, email, driver’s license number, your Benz’s Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), your internet search and browsing information, and other invading information, including where, when, and how fast you drive.
In their findings, they note that Mercedes could use the data to share or sell the data to “marketing service providers” for targeted ads, and even share it with the police or other government agencies.
Already, information gathered from drivers affects crucial elements of their driving experience. In March 2024, The New York Times revealed in a report that data on people’s driving habits is shared with data brokers like LexisNexis and Verisk to be used by insurance companies to adjust rates.
Additionally, apps like Life360, MyRadar, and GasBuddy have been found to be engaged in similar behavior.
As for Mercedes, they note that the E-Class’s personalization features shown in their ad are used to bring people together, and are best represented with the “special” relationship bond between Antonio and Stella Banderas.
“[The Banderas’] genuine father-daughter connection mirrors the essence of what the E‑Class in particular stands for – connecting people through intuitive technology,” Mercedes‑Benz AG Communications and Marketing VP Bettina Fetzer said in a statement.
“Our business sedan offers a broad range of personalization that turns everyday journeys into a special experience.”
Mercedes-Benz is traded on OTC markets as MBGAF and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the ticker MBG.
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