Small business owners have traditionally viewed "vans" as just another obligatory equipment expense – a commodity. We had to convince them that, despite the current climate of economic volatility and the fact that Sprinter vans average a 25% premium price over the competition, the Sprinter was much more than a mere equipment expense.

A critical insight uncovered during our research and planning was the reason the van was commonly viewed as a commodity was businesses could not visualize a van's potential applications. Cargo sought out the two leading small business media properties, Inc. and Fast Company and created a strategic partnership to uncover and celebrate current Sprinter owners and their applications.

Cargo then created and launched two fully-integrated campaigns: "How I Work Smarter" and "Driving Business Potential". These campaigns targeted both Inc. and Fast Company's magazine and digital subscriber base and leveraged over 40 existing Sprinter owners and their unique uses of the product. The fully-integrated campaign included advertorials, eblasts, dedicated micro-sites, events, online advertising, SEO/SEM, custom videos, radio advertising, social media, experiential and dealer marketing elements.

US sales of Sprinter Vans are up 109% YTD. And Mercedes-Benz lauded the campaign as "far exceeding all our expectations" and critical to driving bottom-line revenue. The campaign generated over 30 Million targeted impressions vs. small business decision makers and generated over 15% of all website traffic.