Tag: Mercedes Benz

Mercedes-Benz: Yes, A.I. Do

For the world premiere of their new Mercedes-Benz EQC at CES 2019 in Las Vegas, Mercedes transformed their new model into a wedding carriage. Four lucky couples were invited to test drive the new Mercedes-Benz EQC on the roads of Las Vegas and experience its special A.I. features first hand.

Why this launch twist works

  • It turns a product reveal into a story. A “wedding carriage” reframes a tech premiere into an experience people immediately understand.
  • It makes A.I. tangible. Instead of describing features on a stage, it puts them into a real drive where reactions matter.
  • It earns attention without shouting. The setup is unusual enough to travel, while still keeping the car at the center.

The reusable pattern

Wrap a launch moment in a simple, human ritual. Then invite a small group to experience the product in-context so the story carries the technology, not the other way around.

A few fast answers before you act

What happened in the Mercedes-Benz “Yes, A.I. Do” activation?

For CES 2019 in Las Vegas, Mercedes used the EQC premiere as a wedding-carriage themed experience and invited four couples to test drive the car and experience its A.I. features first hand.

Why use couples and a wedding theme for a car launch?

It creates an instantly recognizable narrative frame, which makes the activation easier to remember and easier to share than a standard demo.

What is the main takeaway for product launches?

Give the viewer a clear story hook, then let the product prove itself through a real experience rather than through claims.

How do you keep a stunt from overshadowing the product?

Make the product the “stage”. The theme should guide attention toward the experience of the product, not away from it.

The intelligent car from Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes-Benz announces that its 2016 and 2017 vehicles in the US can connect with Amazon Echo and Google Home. With that integration in place, owners can remotely start or lock their vehicle, and they can send an address from home straight into the car’s in-car navigation.

What makes this interesting is not the novelty of voice commands. It is the direction. The car starts behaving like a node in a wider home automation ecosystem, not a standalone product you only interact with once you sit behind the wheel. You speak to your assistant at home. The car responds. The boundary between “home experience” and “driving experience” gets thinner.

The ecosystem move, not a feature add-on

A single capability like “remote start” is useful. But the strategic move is building an intelligent ecosystem around the car, using third-party voice assistants people already trust and use daily. That lowers adoption friction and accelerates habit formation. If a driver already uses Alexa or Google Home for routines, adding the car becomes a natural extension.

This also shifts expectations. Once the car is connected into the household’s digital layer, people start wanting context-aware flows. For example, planning and sending destinations before leaving. Or basic vehicle actions triggered as part of an existing routine.

Mercedes is not alone in spotting the pattern

Mercedes-Benz is not the first automaker to recognise the potential of third-party voice assistants. At CES earlier this year, Ford unveiled plans to roll out Alexa-equipped vehicles. Around the same time, Hyundai announced a partnership with Google to add voice control through Google Home.

The competitive question becomes simple. Who turns the car into a meaningful part of the customer’s everyday digital routines first, and who reduces the connected car to a checklist feature.

A few fast answers before you act

What does Mercedes-Benz enable through Alexa and Google Home?

Remote start. Remote lock. Sending addresses from home to the in-car navigation system.

Why is this bigger than “voice control in the car”?

Because it connects the car to an existing smart home ecosystem. That makes the car addressable from outside the vehicle, and it pushes the experience upstream into planning and daily routines.

What should product, CX, and marketing teams watch closely?

The ecosystem choices. The core use cases that become habitual. The trust layer, including permissioning and security for remote actions. The operational reliability, because routines only stick when they work every time.

What is the strategic takeaway in one line?

The “intelligent car” story is increasingly an ecosystem story. It is about where the car lives in the customer’s broader digital life.

The Dancing Traffic Light

Traffic lights can be very dangerous for pedestrians, especially for those who don’t like to wait for the light to change. So the Smart team from Mercedes-Benz created “The Dancing Traffic Light” where a person’s dance moves were brought to a traffic light in real time. As a result 81% more people stopped at that red light.