The Result: My Father’s Dream was the most viewed and liked film that Mercedes-Benz/AMG have ever published on their YouTube channels. It attracted more than seven million views and 300,000 likes. The film has generated more comments than any other film in Mercedes’ YouTube history, 99% of them were positive. It generated significant earned media coverage, including a prime-time TV slot as the number one ‘best moment’ on RTL’s The Ultimate Chart Show. The media value of this spot alone was worth €1m. 

Jump into September and October 2022: Protests in Iran have been on the rise for more than three weeks. They are organized primarily by young women. Women whose rights have been severely restricted since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and whose voices have hardly been heard since. The trigger was the death of Mahsa Amini, also known as Jina. A 22-year-old Kurdish woman who died after being arrested by Iran's so-called "morality police" for wearing an "inappropriate hijab."

This time, the protests were not only on the streets of Iran. They spread like lightning and around the world on social media.

Iranians begin sharing Mahsa Amini's story online using #مهسا_امینی (#MahsaAmini in Persian). Soon, the usual travel pictures and selfies were replaced by a single image. Within days, #Mahsaamini gained international attention on social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter and many international activists, artists and influencers with numerous followers and a wide coverage reacted to her tragic death.

The Iranian regime responded with a shutdown. According to NetBlocks, on the evening of September 19, 2022, parts of Kurdistan in Iran experienced an almost complete disruption of Internet service and eventually a shutdown of mobile networks in the country during the last few weeks.

Yet the regime could not completely silence the movement this way: Images and videos of Iranian women taking off their hijabs and cutting their hair were posted more than 130 million times on social media under the hashtag #mahsamaini, leading to international solidarity with the movement. Groups like Anonymus launch hacking attacks on Iranian police and intelligence, Elon Musk activates his satellite broadband service Starlink for the people of Iran, and foreign leaders announced their support.

All of this is essential to the protests in Iran. Consequently, the protesters reacted with mortal fear to the news that the government was shutting down the Internet in Iran. Without awareness, no revolution can prevail anymore. The great strength of social media is that this attention is easier to get today - if the right story is told.

And the story of Mahsa Amini, as cynical as it might sound, is the right story: it's tragic, told in a few words, and understandable to people worldwide. These are the ingredients that our editorial society, with its short attention span and emotional over-saturation, needs in order to even notice a topic.

Social media can be a trigger for movements. The platforms are ideal for highlighting an important issue, mobilizing initial support, and refuting the propaganda of the powerful with videos, photos, and facts. But that's where the power of social media ends - overestimating its influence can actually significantly harm the movement.

One post, and one can sit back with a good conscience and think, "I did my part in the protests!" This comforting feeling of reassurance is caused by social media. Demonstrate without getting out of bed. It would have been nice.

In my timeline, I continue to read only one request from friends living in Iran: " Get out on the streets!" This is where the real protest takes place: Not in the safety of home, but in the streets, in the universities, in the marketplaces, at the risk of one's life.

Also the Iranian government knows how to use the Editorial Society for its own purposes: Surveillance has never been more widely available. The regime is trying to replace popular social media platforms with its own approved versions, such as Rubika, where it is even easier for it to control the information. A study by Harvard professor Erica Chenoweth even found that from 2010 to May 2016, the success rates of nonviolent protests dropped drastically. The political scientist sees repression like this as one of the important reasons for this.

Yes, social media is an opportunity for the protesters - but so is it for the Iranian authorities. Will the Iranian regime silence the voices of the protesters through brutal repression in the streets and old propaganda methods in social media? The only winner will be the one who manages to combine the tools of the old world with those of the new editorial society in a very smart way.

The Plot: Capturing and sustaining attention in a branded environment requires constant reinvention, both in terms of the quality of content and the channels selected to share the content and drive engagement. To keep She’s Mercedes relevant to modern women, Mercedes-Benz needed to evolve She’s Mercedes into a 360-degree ecosystem.