Sex and the City and Mercedes

Mercedes-Benz joined the bandwagon. After the success of Transformers movie with a tie-in with General Motors and Audi’s own attempt to market Audi vehicles specially the Audi R8, it’s now the turn of Mercedes-Benz to take advantage of the power of this media. The company has forged a partnership with New Line Cinema for the up-coming movie Sex and the City that stars Sarah Jessica Parker, among others. The partnership includes promotional advertisements and the S-Class in the background shots of the movie. The character of Kim Catrall will also drive the new GLK-350 compact SUV. There will also be a Sex and the City-themed Mercedes commercial that will be shown.

Even before Mercedes-Benz entered the picture, the show has been known as the marketer’s heaven. Brand names and luxury goods are name-dropped on a a regular basis on the show. Manolo Blahnik heels, designer gowns and dresses and other symbols of materialism are often mentioned and paraded on the show. Some of the mentioned brands like Jimmy Choo and Manolo Blahniks have become household names, thanks to the show’s characters. Now, it’s Mercedes-Benz turn to take advantage on what was referred to as the ’superbowl for women’. The label is in reference to the fact that the football championships draw tons of money from advertisements. Including Mercedes-Benz, the movie has partnerships with at least eight companies. Mercedes is one; and Steve Cannon of Mercedes-Benz said that his company do not pay for product placement but has its own media campaign promoting its involvement with the film and the product used.

End of the Road for Mercedes-McLaren SLR?

Just checking some of the news items and other online sites here when I chanced upon an entry that says it is the end of the road for the Mercedes-McLaren SLR. Is this true? The site reports that Mercedes-Benz is set to end the production of the SLR supercar at the end of 2009. The phasing of this supercar has been started last year, that began with the coupe version of the SLR Mercedes. If indeed the SLR is set to retire in 2009, this supercar will end its brief 5 year stint in the market.

When the SLR was developed and introduced in the market, Mercedes planned for 400-500 SLRs to be produced every year. But its actual production never really took off. For 2007, 275 SLRs were produced and there was 261 SLRs in 2006. With the last supercar produced, it is expected that Mercedes and McLaren will part ways.

It is expected that McLaren is set to develop a new V8 car named P11.

For Team Mclaren-Mercedes

You may notice that a number of my posts features the Mercedes, the collaboration of Mercedes and McLaren and of course my dream supercar of the moment, the Mercedes-Benz McLaren SLR. So my fascination with Mercedes is out in the open! I realized that talking about Mercedes, and then McLaren will not be complete without discussing the racing tradition of McLaren. So this is the reason why I am making this first blog post about team McLaren-Mercedes of Formula 1, perhaps a more appropriate time since the racing season has begun. The team features Hamilton and Kovalainen as its drivers. Though I don’t religiously follow the race on ESPN since I am glued to tennis whenever its available, I’ll try to make it a point to catch some of the races on cable, even though its a replay. So from now on, some F1 news and views will fill my site so bear with me.