Mercedes-Benz Youth Soccer Experience

Client: Mercedes-Benz USA
General Motors luxury brand vehicle

Challenge: Help Mercedes-Benz launch their new seven-passenger SUV the GL450 by connecting with a key targeted demographic.

Solution: Intersport created a test drive experience at nine large youth soccer tournaments in key SUV and key sales markets. By sponsoring each tournament, M-B was able to take advantage of an ideal target: affluent soccer families. The goal was to provide a rich, extended test drives for parents while there was downtime between their kid’s games.

Each of the nine tournaments (which lasted 2-3 days) had an average attendance of about 20,000. The goal of the program was to engage everyone in attendance and provide 300 test drives per tournament. While the parents were checking out the SUVs the kids were meeting and getting autographed balls from soccer stars like US National team players and MLS stars: Eddie Pope, Brian Ching, Taylor Twellman, to name a few. The parents were greeted by knowledgeable product specialists who were right seat passengers pointing out GL450 features during the test drive. Each test driver received a chair courtesy of Mercedes-Benz as a thank you for their test drive.

Additionally, as part of the event branding Mercedes-Benz sponsored each tournament and used the tournaments to help receive entries in their “GL to Win” sweepstakes.

The program produced just under 3000 test drives and terrific exposure for the new launch campaign. Never before had any of the tournaments participated in a national sponsorship platform making this a first of its kind soccer initiative.