Super Bowl XLV: Luxury Brands Want To Be First Off the Line

With eight automotive brands scheduled to run TV advertisements during the Super Bowl XLV telecast on February 6, there are bound to be sub-plots among them.

The juiciest might be what’s already unfolding among the three German luxury brands: Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi. It will be the first Super Bowl during which they’re all advertising.

Naturally, Mercedes-Benz would like to use its first-ever appearance in the Super Bowl to take another step closer to Lexus. The Toyota luxury brand held off Mercedes’ charge last year to remain the best-selling upscale auto brand in the U.S. But Lexus isn’t advertising in this Super Bowl.

Instead, it looks like Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi actually are going to try to out-contemporize one another in their Super Bowl ads. As each of the long-time rivals introduces important new models to the American market this year, each brand wants to appeal to relatively young demographics and sporty tastes.

Mercedes-Benz, for instance, already has tapped tennis star Serena Williams to help out. And the brand reportedly plans to focus on models including a roadster version of its SLS supercar as well as its C-Class coupe. A social-media campaign – involving four contestants in a road-rally-style "tweet race" to the Super Bowl – already has been launched via Twitter, with a C-Class Coupe as the prize.

Meanwhile, BMW launched a Facebook contest late last week around its revamped X3 SUV, which is built in South Carolina and which will be the focus of at least one of BMW’s two Super Bowl spots.

And Audi has shown its hand strategy-wise, with ads it already has run revisiting the “old luxury” theme that was so effective for the brand a couple of Super Bowls ago.

In a new spot that Audi debuted during the NFL playoff finals, the brand employs a soothingly rhythmic commentary and soporific video sequence in the manner of the Goodnight, Moon classic children's book to take a poke at Mercedes – and offer up its own new A8 sedan as the face of “new luxury.”

The fierce marketing competition among luxury automakers could be just as interesting as the play on the field between the Packers and Steelers – or at least as fun as the Bud Bowl.