Following the success of MercMyRide, Sri Lanka’s first on-demand luxury ride experience with Mercedes-Benz and Uber, the creative agency behind the idea, Saatchi & Saatchi Sri Lanka was awarded a Silverfor its “Successful Use of Technology” in the BTL Category at the Asia-Pacific Customer Engagement Forum & Awards held at The Westin Mumbai Garden City Hotel in India last month. This is the first time a Sri Lankan brand has won an award in this category for customer engagement.
Founded in 2012, the Asia-Pacific Customer Engagement Forums & Awards hosts one of the continent’s largest communities of customer engagement and advocacy professionals, who recognise effective work across India, Sri Lanka and GCC Countries.
The strategic brand collaboration with Uber allowed Mercedes-Benz to deliver a new-age experience to Sri Lankans using the state-of-the-art technology found in the global on-demand mobility app. With a central command center, live film crew and connected vehicles, the experience featured multiple levels of real-time collaboration to deliver a premium service to all passengers. Salesmen from the Mercedes-Benz team personally chauffeured each vehicle, sharing the excitement as they surprised riders on a Valentine’s experience like no other. 
MercMyRide was conceptualized, executed and promoted using only digital and experiential platforms – a testament to the growing convergence of automobile engineering and technology worldwide. With only 4 days of pre-promotion, the experience earned over 25,000 impressions on Uber Sri Lanka’s Twitter page alone. A video of the experience, which was later posted on the popular Mercedes-Benz Sri Lanka Facebook page, was shared over 320 times and reached over 180,000 people in just 5 days. The use of social media further enhanced customer engagement, with Mercedes-Benz recording a 20 percent increase in amount of people reached through Facebook.
Speaking on the win, Dushantha Ahangama, CEO at Saatchi & Saatchi Sri Lanka said, “This is an amazing achievement. I am extremely proud of how much our partnership with Mercedes-Benz has flourished and look forward to producing more great work together in the future.”
Rajeev Pandithage, General Manager – Sales and Parts atMercedes-Benz Sri Lanka added, “We are thrilled with the win. As the first Sri Lankan brand to win in this category, this is not only a testament to our great partnership with Saatchi & Saatchi, but recognition of our joint efforts to engage with a new generation of Sri Lankans through new-age marketingplatforms such as the Mercedes-Benz Sri Lanka social media pages andUber’s reputed on-demand technology. The future looks bright, and we are delighted to work with an innovative agency that can take us there.”
BhavikRathod, General Manager, Uber said, “At Uber, we’re always looking to give our riders the best possible experience. MercMyRide is an example of one such experience. We’re truly happy that everyone here in Sri Lanka loved this idea, and proud of the win. Here’s to many more!”