Mercedes-Benz Employer Brand
A content strategy and social media programme helping Mercedes-Benz attract engineering talent in Silicon Valley — 11x audience growth, 90+ pieces of media coverage, and direct attribution of key hires to content activity.
Mercedes-Benz · 2019 · 
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The challenge
Mercedes-Benz was competing for engineering talent in Silicon Valley - one of the most contested recruitment markets in the world. The problem wasn’t the employment opportunity. Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America sits at the intersection of automotive engineering and emerging technology. Innovations cooked up here make their way into cars all over the world, impacting safety, comfort and connectivity. The problem was visibility. The company’s existing social channels were dormant, its digital presence was minimal, and it had no content strategy to communicate what working there actually looked like.
Against next door neighbors like Google, Apple, Meta and every well-funded startup in the Bay Area, Mercedes-Benz was invisible to the engineers it needed.
My role: Content strategy
With restrictions around sharing R&D in-progress, strategy was built on a simple principle: Show the experience and the people, not the work. Engineers don’t respond to corporate messaging. They respond to technical challenges, interesting problems, and evidence that the those around them are solving difficult challenges in impressive ways.
We relaunched the digital channels with a steady cadence of content highlighting the people and projects behind the Mercedes-Benz engineering operation, the researchers building autonomous systems, connected vehicle technology and next-gen safety systems with collaboration across Silicon Valley and Stuttgart. We built a new website and included a blog to contain a steady stream of human interest content, as well as profile pages to spotlight key engineers. Video testimonials baked in human interest alongside technical expertise.
Each month, we showcased activity around Mercedes-Benz: From employee social events to guest speakers. Wherever possible, we streamed the latter to social channels, adding value and making them interesting and relevant to audiences not yet considering a new employer.
We paired the owned content strategy with an earned media programme, securing coverage that gave the employer brand third-party credibility beyond that which owned channels alone could provide.
The results
- 11x audience growth — from 3,000 to more than 35,000 followers in around 18 months
- 26% of blog visitors went on to explore career opportunities at Mercedes-Benz, proving the value of experiential storytelling
- 90+ pieces of earned media coverage generated by the content programme
- Key engineering roles directly attributed to blog and social media content, marking a measurable hiring impact from content strategy