In 2020, Covid shut down air travel entirely for Chinese residents.

While it was a disaster for airlines, it was an opportunity for Mercedes…

As luxury Chinese travellers still wanted to see the world in style, so they traded business-class for G-Class… Mercedes’ ultimate luxury 4x4.

By capturing consumers in airports on domestic flight routes, we knew we were already targeting China’s affluent sector – as non-essential travel was still kept to a minimum.

This meant we could confidently show amazing imagery and sell a highly premium vehicle, and know we were appealing to a market who would love to be travelling overseas seeing similar sights.

This surprised them to discover not only that they could see such amazing things in China – but that they could travel there in the lap of luxury in a G-Class.

The campaign was carefully crafted to be a meeting of two worlds. On one side, it mimicked the feeling of looking out an airplane window - miles above the landscape... on the other, it created the feeling of sitting inside a luxury 4x4. Together, this showed how even during travel lockdown in China, luxury travellers can still rise above the clouds in style, when they 'Travel G-Class'

These were then placed in high traffic transit media – capturing attention the moment people most wanted to travel overseas – and reminding them that G-Class drivers can still see more of the world.

The campaign has only recently launched, but already there has been an uptick in social interest around the G-Clas – typically a vehicle reserved for a tiny pinnacle of consumers. This has also seen an increase of interest in a media environment which is usually hard to crack using traditional motoring communications.