If you’re part of the higher ed web community and don’t by this point know about the Mercedes-Benz tweet race, @tsand, @ijohnpederson, and #MBteamS, well…

Never mind, I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of it. If not, take a moment and get yourself up to speed.

It was a fantastic demonstration of the power of social media, and a great win not just for @tsand, @ijohnpedersen, and St. Jude, but for the higher ed community.

One thing’s been bothering me, though, and it’s well summed up by @dylanw:

It’s a great point. We’re not exactly Mercedes target audience, are we? Aside from Mrs. @tsand*, how many of us expect to ever own a Mercedes? How many of us even aspire to own one? As Lori Packer wrote:

[Mercedes] ran a great event that I hugely enjoyed participating in and raised money for a good cause, and for that I thank them. But the race coulda been sponsored by Audi or Schwinn for all I cared.

Nonetheless—

And I have to agree. That C-Class coupe? It looks pretty sweet. And did you know that Mercedes made a hybrid? I did not.

But what’s the point of making a whole bunch of people who, as a group, are unlikely ever to own a Mercedes, like your cars a bit more?

Was the whole tweet race in fact, a miscalculation—even an epic fail—on Mercedes part?

For that matter, why wasn’t the tweet race even mentioned in Mercedes’s Super Bowl commercial?

Passion, Community—and Skills

For an answer, take another look at why it was the higher ed web community who was able to push their team to victory.

I absolutely agree with @LoriPA and @Robin2Go that a huge force behind the #MBteamS victory was our passion and our community. As @Robin2Go put it:

This community was engaged and invested in the outcome of this race and that investment was, quite literally, how the higher ed community blew the competition out of the water. … Without continuous encouragement from the celebrity coach, however, [the other teams] simply couldn’t sustain a last ditch effort.

There’s another element those teams seemed to lack, too: the web skills to pull this kind of victory off. Just looking through my browser’s history, I can see that #MBteamS supporters used, aside from Twitter itself: Facebook, yfrog, YouTube, Google Docs, Trendistic, Vimeo, Instagram, TweetGrid, UStream, Klout, WordPress, and Twibbon.

I’m sure I’ve missed a few tools. My question: how many communities, no matter how passionate, could simply follow a race that was happening across 12+ websites and platforms? How many could use them effectively? Not many.

Passion, community, and high-level web geekery. (Brilliantly marshaled by @tsand.) When it comes down to it, who else, besides us higher ed web geeks, could possibly have won?

And Mercedes-Benz Is Hanging out with Us Because…?

Of course, if it hadn’t been the higher ed web community, it was going to be some other tech-savvy group. Perhaps Mercedes miscalculated as to which community (followers of Serena Williams or followers of @tsand) was the most engaged. But clearly they know—or Razorfish should have told them—that this was a race that would be won by the web geeks, right? And that this community probably wouldn’t have a big overlap with people who can actually afford a Mercedes?

Epic fail—or at least miscalculation—is real possibility here.

But put this in the context of Mercedes current rebranding effort:

We’ve got competitors out there that are trying to slap a label of old, stodgy luxury on our brand,” says Steve Cannon, VP of marketing at Mercedes-Benz USA.

It wasn’t always so. Want to see the Mercedes brand as it used to be? Watch the 1958 French film noir Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (a.k.a Frantic, a.k.a. Elevator to the Gallows). Aside from being great film, it has a fantastic soundtrack by Miles Davis and features a 300SL Mercedes-Banz Gullwing which is stolen by a young couple—after they kill its owners.

French cinema, film noir, Miles Davis, and car young people would kill for. That may or may not be your cup of tea, in 1958 this was some seriously hip stuff—and some seriously good product placement.

How far they’ve fallen. To me, stodgy is exactly the word that describes how I personally have viewed the Mercedes brand. If forced to buy a car with a price tag like a Mercedes—I would need to be forced—I’d probably buy something else.

But our job isn’t to buy the cars. It’s our job to make them cool again.

Higher Ed Web Geeks, Cool?

Well, we know it’s true, but how often do others recognize it?

Another way to look at it: we are the recommenders. If you have anything to do with technology, you are constantly being asked to recommend software, computers, phones, websites, and more. Our opinion on these things is taken seriously, even by people who aren’t really sure what it is we do all day. Even by people who might actually be in the market for a Mercedes.

While Mercedes didn’t know exactly who would win the tweet race, they had to know that we are exactly the kind of people who would turn out to participate.

And while we’re not car experts, having a couple thousand web-geeky people out there who suddenly know your products and think positively of them is a win for Mercedes. And if I’m right, it’s a pretty brilliant social marketing move by Mercedes. Run one campaign (the Super Bowl ad) for potential buyers. Run another (the tweet race) for the people whose opinions the potential buyers respect (or, at the very least, who they want to impress).

Here in higher ed, where we need to market our institutions to so many audiences (potential students, students, parents, and alumni just for starters), there are no doubt lessons for us to draw from all this. But I’ll leave them for another time.

In the meantime we can just bask in the afterglow. We are #MBteamS. We make Mercedes cool again.

*Originally written before watching Higher Ed Live, updated to reflect @tsand’s revelations about his plans for the car. Return