Title	MBOARD PROJECT
Brand	MERCEDES-BENZ
Product/Service	MERCEDES-BENZ
Category	A06. USE OF SPECIAL EVENTS AND STUNT/LIVE ADVERTISING
Entrant Company	BBDO PORTUGAL Lisbon, PORTUGAL
Advertising Agency	BBDO PORTUGAL Lisbon, PORTUGAL

Name	Company	Position
Rui Silva/Marco Pacheco	BBDO Portugal	Creative Director
Rita Bastos	BBDO Portugal	Account Director
Marco Pacheco/Rui Silva/Pedro Gonçalves/Felippe Motta	BBDO Portugal	Copywriter
Ruben Rodrigues	BBDO Portugal	Art Director
Pedro Gonçalves	BBDO Portugal	Head Of Digital
João Vitória	BBDO Portugal	Cto
	XPAND IT	Telemetry Team
	MINISTÉRIO FILMES	Production
	SAIS DE PRATA	Photography

Results and Effectiveness

The making of a Mercedes-Benz surfboard travelled the world as fast as the board was riding the waves. Besides evening news shows and national newspapers from around the world the surfboard was featured at The Huffington Post, The Verge, PSFK, Hypebeast, The Inertia, Surfer, Surfline, Surf Europe, Trip, Design Boom, Design Father. Red Bull, an authority in action sports, talked about it. Pamela Anderson tweeted about it. With this we generated earned media worth more than a million euros of investment. Furthermore, it’s impossible to measure the amount of people that expressed on social media their wish of having one.

Creative Execution

There was no right media outlet for this project, so our media outlet was the surfboard itself. There was no media team, but our production team had the engineers and designers from Mercedes-Benz AMG from Stuttgart building the best media outlet ever made for the sea. They took this challenge as a once in a lifetime opportunity to apply all their knowledge in uncharted waters from design up to production materials and the iconic Mercedes-Benz silver paint. The surfboard was officially announced and shown by Garrett in front of thousands of people right after riding it at Nazaré. At the same time Mercedes-Benz released photos and videos that told the full story. The surfboard hit the news and the story went viral. To make the story richer for traditional media we also divulged the custom-made telemetry system that allowed us to register Garrett’s top speed at Nazaré.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Every year, big wave rider Garrett McNamara challenges Nazaré’s giant waves in Portugal. This is where he set the world record when he rode a 34-meter wave. Mercedes-Benz is Garrett’s official vehicle supplier. But although Nazaré’s Zon North Canyon event has a very high profile Mercedes-Benz wasn’t getting the awareness they wanted as a sponsor. The challenge was to make this sponsorship visible and relevant throughout the event for a broad audience. The insight was simple: a vehicle supplier has to be where the action is. We built a Mercedes-Benz surfboard according the rigorous demands of Nazaré’s waves and Garrett’s brand of surfing. Together with Garrett and the engineering and design team at Mercedes-Benz AMG in Stuttgart we built a very unique surfboard on par with the storied Silver Arrow line of vehicles. We also developed a custom-made telemetry system that would allow us to register Garrett’s top speed.