OBSESSION WITH AN ICON

TitleOBSESSION WITH AN ICON
BrandDAIMLER
Product/ServiceMERCEDES-BENZ SL 500
Category E04. Other Packaging
Entrant DAIMLER Stuttgart, GERMANY
Idea Creation ANTONI Berlin, GERMANY
Credits
Name Company Position
Marcell Francke antoni GmbH Creative Director
Tilman Gossner antoni GmbH Creative Director
Mathias Wilke antoni GmbH Art Director
Matti Lietsch antoni GmbH Copywriter
Erick Barrios antoni GmbH Copywriter
Amelie Harich antoni GmbH Account Executive
Atsuko Kudo Atsuko Kudo Designer
Jeff Bark Management Artists Director

The Campaign

The first car hand-wrapped in latex. A packaging, that translates this obsession in the most fashionable way by using a sensual material: latex. Highlighting its iconic shape by hiding it.

Creative Execution

Since a car has never been packaged in latex, a specialist was needed: Atsuko Kudo – the world’s most renowned designer for outstanding latex couture, trusted by celebrities. During the preparation process, Atsuko and her team created countless prototypes, glued together 260 square meters of latex by hand (stripe by stripe) and built a 32 feet wooden-platform equipped with 96 feet of suction tubes to fit 4 high-performance suckers. After that, the SL was rolled on the platform, carefully wrapped in latex and connected to the suckers, which removed all the air from the installation. Within minutes, the latex fully embraced the entire SL 500, showing more and more of its iconic contours and lines and creating an art object that captured the car’s shape.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

An unusual packaging, the fashion world was obsessed with. The SL 500 hand-wrapped in latex became part of one of the most successful fashion campaigns in Mercedes-Benz history. Visitors of the Fashion Week as well as designers and models with strong media attention recognised and shared it quickly. The hand-wrapped SL 500 was covered by relevant blogs, renowned magazines like e.g. VOGUE and tabloid TV shows, reaching its highest TV PR-value of all time, generating a total PR value of 19,1m€. It became a global conversation in the fashion-world, shaping the brand’s image as a leading design competence.

Mercedes-Benz became an important sponsor in the fashion world to underline its design competence, fashion credibility and reach a young, progressive and mostly female audience. The key is to create a real brand experience. As for the SL 500, this was achieved by wrapping the entire car in the fashionable material latex. It created a visual experience that strongly linked fashion with the design of the SL 500.