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: Stephanie Clifford

Car companies such as Hyundai and Ford have been showing solidarity with consumers recently, running ads promising that the companies will help them should they lose their jobs. Mercedes-Benz USA is trying a different way to get customers to buy cars as it introduces its updated E-Class Series. The ad campaign for the midsize car, available as a sedan or a coupe, is the company’s biggest in two years, estimated at $75 million. It does not talk about great value or good deals. Instead, it focuses on the cars’ technology and heritage, a somewhat standard approach for the brand.

“Everyone has that trigger that’s going to get them out there in the marketplace again, assuming that they have the means and they’re just choosing not to spend it,” said Alex Gellert, the chief executive of Merkley & Partners, part of the Omnicom Group, which created the Mercedes print and television ads.

The E-Class update is meant to turn around an alarming sales slide for Mercedes, which is owned by Daimler. Its US sales have declined 28.7% this year from the same time in 2008, according to the company. May sales were even further off, falling 33.4% from May 2008. The United States turned in the worst showing of any geographic region in May.

Even given the sales challenge, Steve Cannon, vice-president of marketing for Mercedes-Benz USA, decided not to echo the recession-conscious marketing that other car manufacturers have used. Hyundai promised to help customers pay for their cars if they lost their jobs, an offer Ford and General Motors soon matched. A recent spate of ads for Honda’s Insight described it as “designed and priced for us all.”

“I’d rather tell our brand story, our innovation story, our value story, than join the chorus of everyone else that’s screaming ‘sale’—that’s about the only message that’s out there right now,” Cannon said. “Customers have told us, ‘we know there are deals out there,’ so just getting on television with an expensive media plan and shouting, ‘there’s a sale,’ they already know that.”