Oh Lord, Won’t You Buy Me…

More than a generation has passed since counterculture heroine Janis Joplin first prayed for a Mercedes-Benz in a whimsical ditty that became a rock classic.

Now Mercedes marketers have revived the 25-year-old recording for a commercial designed to help answer their prayers and cultivate new customers.

The recording joins a chorus of classic rock songs that advertisers have pounced on to pitch sneakers, soda, and beer. But Joplin’s song is different because it is a satire on materialism that makes its point by mentioning the car brand by name.

Mercedes’ decision to buy rights to the recording dismayed some rock fans because it drafts an icon of the Sixties counterculture into the service of a car that symbolizes wealth and social stature.

“Some people will say this is another example of commercialism usurping the icons dear to us,” says Ross Goldstein, who heads Generation Insights, a marketing consulting company in San Francisco.

But Goldstein suspects that many more people will like the commercial because they have grown up and learned to laugh at themselves. “It almost makes the purchase of a Mercedes-Benz a counterculture act,” he says.