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When a mother and her two sons walked away from a terrible car accident in their A-Class last December, their experience debunked the perception that a small car could not be as safe as a large car.
This common perception has been a challenge for Mercedes’ Australian
advertising agency, Clemenger BBDO, and together with the Mercedes-Benz marketing team they realised how this real-life experience could be used to communicate the strength of the passenger safety cell that is a feature of all Mercedes-Benz cars.
The result is a series of print-media advertisements that started running nationally this month. The two-part advertisements explain the crash, and show the crumpled exterior and the intact interior of the actual car that crashed.
“It’s a compelling endorsement,” says Clemenger BBDO’s Greg Moore.
“We tend to think about safety and safety testing as something that happens in a laboratory. When a mother and two children are driving home one night and a car goes on the wrong side of the road and crashes into them, that’s real life.
“The two cars had a combined speed of 180 km/h and the family walked out of the A-Class. That’s powerful,” said Mr Moore.
The A-Class depicted in the print advertisement was hit by another car that had speared onto the wrong side of a road in outer Melbourne on December 15 last year.
“We had to retrieve the actual car to photograph its interior and exterior,” said Mr Moore.
The closing speed of the impact was estimated to be around 180 km/h. Due to the force of the collision, the A-Class was thrown into the air. It then rolled twice before finally coming to rest facing the right way up.
Incredibly, the three occupants – a mother and her two sons – were able to walk away with barely a scratch. They were protected by a Mercedes-Benz invention patented back in 1951 – the passenger safety cell.
Of course, Mercedes engineers have meticulously refined the concept since then, particularly in the case of the A-Class.
The unique structure of the A-Class allows the engine, which lies at an angle, to slide underneath the passenger safety cell in a frontal collision. The sandwich floor also helps place the occupants above the point of impact in a side collision.
Many Mercedes innovations worked in concert with the passenger safety cell to help protect the family. The crumple zones absorbed the force of the various impacts. The belt pre-tensioners pulled the car’s occupants deep into their seats. The belt force limiters subsequently cushioned the impact, lessening the chances of seat belt injury. Sensors deployed the airbags in stages as they were needed. Even the carefully designed interior surface ensured nothing broke or splintered to create harmful edges.
“Despite its compact dimensions, the A-Class actually offers safety levels similar to the larger E-Class sedan,” said Horst von Sanden, Senior Executive Marketing Communications for Mercedes-Benz Passenger Cars.
Highlighting safety innovations is not new to the marketing team at Mercedes-Benz Australia and advertising agency Clemenger BBDO.
A 1991 television advertisement, which confirmed the high safety standards of the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, won the prestigious international Gold Lion award at the Cannes Film Festival. The advertisement depicted the S-Class that saved the lives of an Australian family involved in a severe collision at an estimated impact speed of over 190 km/h.
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