Culture eats strategy for breakfast: Mercedes edition
If this ad doesn't convince you that old cars are more fun than new ones, I don't know what will.
Mercedes' 2021 "Valet Guys" spot is a masterclass in "culture eats strategy for breakfast." The premise is simple: customers complain that parking big cars in cities is getting harder. Mercedes' response? Build self-parking technology. But this engineering-driven solution reveals everything about their culture.
The execution is flawless. The all-female creative team (that part, unfortunately, is far more revolutionary than the tech advertised) crafted three distinct characters in seconds. It's genuine cinema.
But watch what happens: Mercedes positions their technology as the thing that ends the human drama. The valets become obsolete. The fun stops. The engineering solution "solves" a problem that was never really about parking.
When people say parking is hard, they're expressing frustration with car-centric cities. The human solution would be rethinking urban mobility. The Mercedes solution? Add more autonomous vehicles to already congested streets.
This perfectly captures Mercedes under Gorden Wagener: engineering excellence over human understanding. Cars as Swiss watches that solve technical problems while missing the cultural moment entirely.
Contrast this with BMW's "The Hire" (starring Clive Owen! And featuring directors like Guy Ritchy taking his – then wife – Madonna for a proper ride) from twenty years earlier. Those films understood that cars exist in relationship with people, not despite them.
Mercedes didn't just advertise self-parking. They revealed their DNA: always reaching for the engineering solution when what's needed is cultural understanding.