”Queen of Tears” Kim Soo Hyun's sports car is a hot topic... Benz is also smiling after the TV series' success

The TvN weekend drama 'Queen of Tears' has been breaking the highest ratings every day, exploding the box office jackpot, and Mercedes-Benz Korea, which has embarked on PPL (indirect advertising), has a big smile on its face together.

According to the import car industry on the 10th, Mercedes-Benz Korea supported the production of nine representative vehicles including the high-performance electric sedan 'Mercedes-AMG EQS' and the top luxury flagship sedan 'Mercedes-Maybach S-Class', as well as their production through 'Queen of Tears'.

The tvN Saturday drama 'Queen of Tears', which premiered on the 9th, is a drama about the third generation of the Queen's Group conglomerate and department store president Hong Hye-in (played by Kim Ji-won) and Baek Hyun-woo (Kim Soo-hyun), the son of the village head of Yongdu-ri, and their three-year marriage crisis that miraculously begins again. The drama incorporates a love story.

Firstly, the two cars of Baek Hyun-woo, a lawyer from a prestigious university law department in the drama, are the Mercedes-AMG EQS 53 4MATIC+, the first electric car of the high-performance brand, and the Mercedes-AMG SL 63 4MATIC+, a luxury roadster.

In addition, the luxury flagship sedan Mercedes-Maybach S 680 4MATIC will be the car of Hong Hae-in, further highlighting the character of the haughty and sophisticated Queen's Group conglomerate third-generation Hong Hae-in.

In addition to this, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, the seventh full-change model of the luxury flagship sedan S-Class, will appear as the car of M&A expert Yoon Eun-seong (played by Park Sung-hoon).

A source from Mercedes-Benz Korea explained, "We decided to support the vehicle and production of 'Queen of Tears' to bring the main characters in the drama to the surface in a three-dimensional way and to show customers the appeal of Mercedes-Benz's representative models.

Mercedes-Benz Korea's PR strategy of informing the public about the advantages of its flagship models was on target. According to Nielsen Korea, the viewer ratings for episode 10 of 'Queen of Tears' averaged 20.9% (based on integrated cable, IPTV and satellite pay platforms) and reached 22.7% in the metropolitan area and 19% and 20.6% in the country.

Queen of Tears, which renewed its own highest ratings for five consecutive weeks in both the metropolitan and national household standards, ranked first in viewer ratings in the same time slot on all channels, including terrestrial content. Not only that, the drama also ranked first in the Global Top 10 Series (non-English) category announced by Netflix on 3rd April.

The drama's growing popularity has led to an increase in enquiries about the models featured in the film, along with people actually visiting the exhibition space operated by the Mercedes-Benz Korea dealership.

This is not the first time that a marketing strategy utilising a drama has fully benefited from publicity. The company has supported the production of SBS drama 'Lawyer with Only 1000 Won' and JTBC drama 'The Youngest Son of a Conglomerate'.

An official from Mercedes-Benz Korea said, "Drama PPL is a very effective marketing strategy that can expect synergy effects by adding the image of the character, the Mercedes-Benz brand and the image that the vehicle pursues and emphasises", adding, "It is not only expected to simply increase sales volume, but also to imprint the image of a premium brand on current and future customers. It is also significant in terms of imprinting the image of the brand as a premium brand on current and future customers".