The GLA “Audiobook Adventure”

For the market launch of the new Mercedes GLA, Avantgarde and Mercedes Benz developed a very special test drive campaign: the "Audiobook Adventure".

The core of the concept was an audio book spoken by Christoph Maria Herbst, a well-known German actor, which was intended to turn the test drive into an interactive experience. The story of the audio book determined the route of the test drive and tied in real environmental details such as churches, rivers or landmarks. These were linked to the GLA's COMAND Online technology via an app developed by Avantgarde. The goal was to let test drivers experience the qualities of the new vehicle model and become part of the GLA product world in a mixture of test drive, interactive story and real locations.

At four surrounding events in Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne and Munich, which took place in April 2014, test drivers met the actors and elements of the story live. To ensure that the campaign was not limited to just four events and cities, the company says it was able to adapt the audio book and integrate it in different variants into the regular test drive process at 60 participating dealers.

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