antoni garage & Mercedes Benz Never Stop Improving

Mercedes Benz has always done a good job in making its cars look good in commercials. Sleek, sophisticated and luxuriously well-equipped, the brand’s output oozed ‘made-it’ status. However, they weren’t the kind of spots that knocked your proverbial socks off with vibrancy and flair. For their latest work promoting the new C-Class model, German agency antoni garage have swapped sleek for sensational, pounding out a vision of sporty heroes and artists who ‘Never Stop Improving’.

Utilising the talents of French directing-duo We Are From LA, the kinetically-edited spot matches speedy footage of the C-Class in action with energetic explosions of hard-work in action (plus celebrity faces). Drawing in brand ambassador Roger Federer and South African star sprinter and ‘brand friend’ Akani Simbine (as well as stars of golf, baseball, swimming and dancing), the commercial is a filming-format smashing, speed-shifting, pulse-pounding, smile-inducing playful assault on the senses, all set to a perfect track from German-Ghanaian hip-hop artist Serious Klein.

We had a great time with the spot, so caught up with antoni garage ECD Marcell Francke for the low-down on the change in pace, the hectic shoot and the breathless reaction to the slick campaign.

We’re not going to lie, at first glance we did not think this was a car spot, let alone one for a luxury brand like Mercedes-Benz! Did you approach the campaign knowing you wanted to make something a little different?

The client Mercedes-Benz Cars basically and comprehensively aims at rejuvenating their target group, a target group for whom lifestyle brands are key, so this effects the present C-Class campaign as well. And lifestyle-oriented brands take a huge space in the target group's lives. As a consequence, we wanted to become very approachable and authentic when representing this group and showcasing the brand.

Sports and athletes can be very aesthetic on the one side and full of effort, almost brutally-looking, on the other. This tension between aesthetics and roughness was designed to be mirrored in the campaign and especially in the spot.

When did the connection to sports people come to you? What was it about the car model that made the link?

The new C-Class is the sportiest C-Class of all times so far, so we decided to bring in the sporty, athletic element. The car has been improved and bettered steadily over the years, becoming more and more sporty and dynamic. Self-optimization is a key value for athletes, no matter if amateur or professional. That was our springboard to “Never Stop Improving”.

How did you find your directors? What was it you were looking for?

We put much effort in finding directors who meet the present zeitgeist and who can also manage to create the kind of authenticity and approachability in pictures, the kind of which the viewer feel spoken to and represented. For “Never Stop Improving” we found the perfect directors together with Iconoclast Berlin: We Are From LA are directors who have proven more than once that they cannot only create such films but they also manage to influence pop culture and provide a formative experience for their generation. Just to mention a few – Pharrell’s “Happy or the Evian “Babies”.

How was the shoot - it looks as though there were a LOT of different techniques and formats used?

All in all we used four different cams, be it iPhone camera, analog and digital, which did not only effect the formats (4:3, 16:9) but also the look and - above all - the sheer amount of material: after 6 shooting days we had 24 hs of film. (Three weeks of editing. Just saying.)

How did the shoot differ from others you’ve been on? 

We did not only have two directors but also two DOPs so we could double-produce at the same time and did not have to organise from set to set. WAFLA shot a lot of stuff left and right spontaneously, stuff that had not been boarded, the impact of which was formative for our spot’s authenticity as well.

How did you decide on the sportspeople to use? Did you have specific ideas as to how you wanted them shown or was it worked out with them? 

In the beginning we looked for sports that enabled us to create a relationship and analogy between sports and cars. Let’s take baseball as an example. The athlete jumps onto base, raising a big dust cloud. Then the car drives out of that dust. Or a swimmer glides through the water such as a car through a puddle. – Then we allocated athletes to the sports (where we were able to choose from the big pool of Mercedes-Benz ambassadors and friends of the brand, like Roger Federer and Akani Simbibe) and that was how it was done.

There’s a lot going on in the edit/post, with kinetic animation and super-fast cuts. How did you refine it down to what worked best for the campaign? 

We needed not only music to drive the sportiness and dynamics but also editing to strengthen and intensify the whole. Maybe you noticed that after watching the spot your eyes have mastered a little sports training – crazy fast edit. We have also made use of smaller 2-D animations in order to tweak the spot even more into modern and unseen.

The spot has just launched and we think it’s going to be really well received. What’s your dream response from a prospective customer audience (other than a flurry of pre-orders, obviously)?

We’d love people to watch the spot and be irritated about what they’ve just seen. And no, we didn’t shoot for a sporting goods manufacturer but for a car brand, and we’re pretty aware (and proud) of the impression shared by others that the way of representation of a car brand (and especially of a German one) is quite unusual.

Will we see the campaign continue? 

Sadly not.