Are you a Mercedes Benz or a BMW?
Hello everyone and welcome to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. My name is Roberta and I'm happy to be back this week with a branding question. Is your personal brand communicating what you purpose for it to communicate? Are you sending a clear message of what your personal brand represents? And the question is,
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How would you like your personal brand to be represented to potential customers? Well, today I thought I should take us back to just over 30 years ago. In South Africa, in Cape Town, the motherland, there is an area called Chapman's Peak, Chapman's Peak. It's a very long stretch of winding roads
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along a very rocky, mountainous area where on the top, on your left hand side, depending which way you're driving, you will have the rocks falling onto the cars on the street. And then below the street, you have rocks falling onto the Atlantic Ocean. So a gentleman called Christopher White.
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who had left work and was exhausted. He had been working for long hours, was driving home on Chapman's Peak. And as he was driving on his Mercedes Benz, headed home in order to get his much needed rest. His body gave in and he fell over the rocks, a hundred meters, that's a hundred meter dash.
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at the Olympics, 100 meters towards the Atlantic Ocean. And as I mentioned earlier, the very hundred meters towards the ocean is also rocky. So his Mercedes fans hit all those rocks going down 100 meters, and the car, other than the smashed window, was left standing.
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Its entire body was still looking like a Mercedes-Benz. Fortunately, Christopher was wearing a seatbelt. Not only did he survive the accident, but the Mercedes-Benz was still standing after hitting rocks for 100 meters falling. So when that accident happened, Mercedes-Benz went on a new ad campaign.
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to show how strong and durable and now safe the Mercedes-Benz car is. I'm going to play the ad that they made in order to capitalize on this incident. And then we will talk about this later.
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Imagine it is the evening of October the 14th, 1990.
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Imagine you are Christopher White driving home. You're extremely tired and not watching.
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So that's it. Never.
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White survived this 100 meter plunge for two reasons. He was wearing his seat belt, and he was driving a Mercedes
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And as it says at the end of the ad, engineered like no other car in the world. It's engineered to be safe, it's engineered to be durable, and it's engineered to be strong enough to keep you alive in case of a hundred meter fall over rocks. Just as we were in awe of how wonderful, safe it is to drive a Mercedes-Benz.
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Not long after that, in came BMW with an ad for the same Chapman's Peak in Cape Town area. And they did something else in response to what Mercedes was doing with this campaign. So I'm going to take a moment and let you listen to
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what BMW and how it responded to the Chipmunks Peak ad.
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Doesn't it make sense to drive a luxury sedan?
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that beats the bends.
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Did you hear that? Let me repeat that. Doesn't it make sense to drive a luxury sedan that beats the bends? Now, let's think about how amazing that pun is. First of all, Chapman's Peak is a bendy winding road and I will post links to both ads so that you can watch them and get a full picture of what the story is about. And secondly, they say,
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Doesn't it make sense to drive a luxury vehicle that beats the bends? What is the first car that we talk about? The Mercedes-Benz. Now, think about it. What would you like your brand to communicate? Would you like your brand to communicate like Mercedes did? That it will keep you safe, it is strong and durable?
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or would you like your brand to be in response to what other brands are currently doing and you want to be the one that stands out, the one that says, I don't even make the mistakes to begin with. I will take you straight to the top. Now we all know how important safety is, especially when we get on our cars and we drive, everybody wants to return home in one piece.
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So ask yourself a question. Are you a Mercedes that in case of any microeconomic changes, in case of anything happening outside there, are you able to be strong and durable and withstand the test of time? Are you in it for the long haul? Or in case of the BMW, are you the kind of brand that stands out?
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that doesn't even need to have those aspects in place because it is that amazing and that top peak of a brand to begin with. So what kind of brand are you communicating to the market? What is your personal brand? Is it a Mercedes type like brand on Chapman's Peak or is it a BMW?
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brand on Chapman's Peak. Thank you for listening to today's podcast. As I mentioned, I will attach both links of these ads on the show notes so that you can watch them and fully understand the comparison and the story between these two ads. Thank you so much for joining us today on the Speaking and Communicating podcast. And we will see you at the next episode.
