Challenge: Mercedes-Benz has become an old man’s brand.One of the most established luxury automotive brands in the world, Mercedes-Benz, is well known for its expertise in building safe, visionary, and reliable passenger cars. Ever since 1886, the Swabian auto-manufacturer has followed the maxim: “the best or nothing”, highly appreciated by its loyal customer base, the “Upper Conservative Segment,” aged 60 and over.In contrast, young and future customers, lack a relevant contemporary image of Mercedes-Benz. Even worse, research has shown that BMW and Audi models are seen as far more appealing to the young. Mission: Enter the life of the young with a 125 year old maxim “the best or nothing”.It became our mission to vividly illustrate the tenet that Mercedes-Benz really is the best. 125 years later, we knew we had to re-interpret this maxim as modern and unseen as possible, for the purpose of bringing the proven maxim across to a whole new generation of customers. In order to do so, we identified a simple, but useful insight in winning over the young: The young consistently consume by the ‘customers-who-bought-this-item-also-bought-this’ principle, shared via the web. Trigger: Actions speak louder than words.In order to let action speak, we paired Mercedes-Benz with Stefan Gbureck. Stefan is a street photographer, a performance artist, an author… and he is always on the road. So he let us send him on a hitchhiking tour across Europe – a tour on which Stefan was only allowed to hitchhike with Mercedes-Benz. Stefan blogged about his experiences wherever he went, in order to meet the target group’s need for product recommendations. And soon, more people joined him on his journey, discussing the “best or nothing”. Result: “The best or nothing” has become a hot topic all over the webAfter 17 days and nights on the road and the help of supporting measures, awareness of the new brand claim was raised from 0% to 11% for 2010. But the greater achievement lay in the brand engagement of thousands of people and the countless stories that grew from it. The young heavily discussed the Benz’ experience and engaged with the 125 year old maxim. So we found that a single hitchhiker was able to prove that a maxim from 1886 is as alive and relevant to the young as ever before.