Bringing new life to a classic brand by putting a different type of driver behind the wheel.  

Mercedes introduced the $30,000 CLA in 2013 in a bid to get younger buyers to engage with the brand, but they still had a fundamental perception problem: the people they were targeting didn’t want a Mercedes at any price because they didn’t think it was cool or sexy, and that was an issue, because they had a lot of these cars. We needed to change the way people thought about Mercedes, fast. 

The CLA was a new entrant in an old category, so we wanted to create an equally innovative and pioneering campaign to promote it. Instead of doing our broadcast campaign the old fashioned way, we worked with YouTube filmmaker Casey Neistat to direct and star in our spot, as well as a series of videos leading up to it that would tease it out, for a first of its kind creator-driven campaign, designed to earn its media. The first three videos document the process and hijinx of creating the final video, the commercial itself, which aired nationally and was both controversial and wildly effective, putting the cars on backorder for months.

"Yes, this is definitely a car commercial, but it's not a stuffy luxury car plug by a mile. It's fun, it's frenetic, and it'll probably turn you on in that way that movies about renegade hackers and underdog football teams make you want to break stuff. This ad doesn't make you want to be richer—it makes you want to have fun."

-Mario Aguilar, Gizmodo

Casey also decided to create his own bootleg merchandise for the project and send it directly to fans.
The clients enjoyed this much less than we and his fans did.