Automotive News
Mercedes-Benz’s slogan is, “The best or nothing.”
When it comes to its advertising, a TV and video analytics company agrees.
Ace Metrix announced that Mercedes-Benz is the most effective luxury automotive brand of 2015. While its scoring, so far, is from January to Oct. 31, Ace Metrix is confident Mercedes will hold onto the title in the last two months of 2015.
Mercedes received an “ace score” of 599, up from 592 in 2014, when the company also was named most effective automotive brand in advertising.
Coming in second, and moving up one spot from 2014, was Buick, just six points behind Mercedes, at 593. Buick finished third in 2014 with a score of 579.
The ace score works like this: Ace Metrix scores every national TV ad, and the majority of digital video ads, across 96 categories, creating a comparative database.
Then, a unique panel of at least 500 consumers, representative of the U.S. TV- and Internet-viewing audience, scores each ad in the exact same manner. The results are presented on a scale of 1 to 950, which represents scoring on creative attributes such as persuasion, likeability, information, attention, change, relevance, desire and watchability.
Ace Metrix applies a natural language processing algorithm to the hundreds of qualitative verbatim responses collected for each ad, deriving a score that indicates positive, negative or neutral emotional impact and represents the ad’s position on an Emotional Sentiment Index from 1 to 100.
“We’re trying to help brands understand their ads,” said Skip Street, vice president of strategy for Ace Metrix.
Street credited Mercedes’ success to the automaker’s wide approach — it appeals to everybody.
“They’re good at what they’re doing,” he said.
For example, Mercedes aired its lighthearted Super Bowl spot called “Fable,” in which a tortoise beats a hare in a race thanks to an AMG GT S. On the other side of the spectrum was “Crashworthy,” which included a montage of Mercedes vehicles going through crash tests.
Through 10 months of 2015, Mercedes has sold 301,913 vehicles.
Street noted that luxury car advertising is a competitive marketplace. Ace Metrix’s results show just that, especially with a close finish by Buick.
“Buick’s largest focus is on perception change, reinserting themselves in the luxury market,” Street said.
But Buick is far from being the only close challenger to Mercedes. Street mentioned Audi, Acura, BMW, Infiniti and Volvo all as worthy opponents for Ace Metrix’s top ranking.
“It’s a crowded space,” Street said.
Advertising during the Super Bowl offers companies the largest, and most expensive, TV audience of the year.
Despite Mercedes’ success with its Super Bowl ad in 2015, the company announced this week that it will not advertise during the 2016 Super Bowl.
Street called the Super Bowl an interesting event in the ad world but acknowledged that it’s not as big of a deal for a company such as Mercedes compared with a company that is trying to get into the raw audience.
While the landscape for advertising is changing with the rise of digital media, Street sees it working together with TV.
“TV is a great vehicle for that mass reach,” he said. “Digital is very specific.”
As for luxury automotive ads, Street doesn’t think there’s any limit for them to get better.
“The bar continues to move up in products and in ads,” he said.
Read the original article at Automotive News.
