Frank­furt/Cologne, September 2011 - With a two-stage upbeat event for inter­na­tional jour­nal­ists at the begin­ning of the 64th Inter­na­tional Auto­mo­bile Exhi­bi­tion in Frank­furt, Mercedes-Benz showed its vision of the future of the auto­mo­bile. To conclude the 125th birthday year of the motor car, the top brand showed at the highest emotional level the concepts and tech­nolo­gies with which the inventor of the auto­mo­bile will be tack­ling the next 125 years of indi­vidual mobility.

Oliver Schrott Kommu­nika­tion was respon­sible as lead agency for the plan­ning, concep­tion and imple­men­ta­tion of these two PR events as well as for the back­ground programs. Their eye-catching staging was accom­plished in close co-oper­a­tion with media artist Andree Verleger and his company ABC Event­pro­duk­tion.

This was the first time that Mercedes-Benz had invited 600 guests to the Festival Hall of Frank­furt Fair on the evening before the actual opening of the IAA. The single theme at the centre of the gala opening evening was the oppor­tu­nity posed by hydrogen as the central energy source for the emis­sion-free mobility of the future. Against the magnif­i­cent back­ground of a thrilling show programme enti­tled “Sym­phony of Inno­va­tion”, Dr Dieter Zetsche presented an “S Class of the future” in the form of the F 125 research vehicle, which is driven by a fuel cell. His speech on the future of mobility, together with two intro­duc­tory films also produced by OSK featuring the boss of Linde, Wolf­gang Reitzle, and the Amer­ican advisor and visionary Jeremy Rifkin provided the event with a suit­able programme frame­work.

The second act of Mercedes-Benz fair commu­ni­ca­tion was the IAA press confer­ence on the first press day. Under the motto “Mercedes NEXT”, the brand delib­er­ately distanced itself from the festive formality of the previous evening by being notice­ably younger, more colourful and trendier, perfectly matched to the small and compact models of the smart and Mercedes-Benz series.

As on the previous evening, the links between the virtual and the real world played a central role in the staging of the smart fortwo elec­tric drive, the smart forvi­sion study, the new Mercedes-Benz B Class and the open super sports car SLS AMG Road­ster. Videos with powerful images on large move­able media surfaces in combi­na­tion with artists and dancers performing live in a care­fully balanced mix of infor­ma­tion and emotion ensured excite­ment, enter­tain­ment and strong pictures of the new models.