Swedish Academy threatens to sue Mercedes-Benz

The car maker is using one of the late poet Karin Boye's most widely known poems to launch a new car model. 

  • Car maker Mercedes-Benz takes help from a poem by Swedish poet Karin Boye (1900-1941), in their new commercial. The poem, possibly Boye’s most famous, is called ”I rörelse” (”On the Move”): ”Den mätta dagen, den är aldrig störst. Den bästa dagen är en dag av törst. Nog finns det mål och mening i vår färd - men det är vägen, som är mödan värd. Det bästa målet är en nattlång rast, där elden tänds och brödet bryts i hast. På ställen, där man sover blott en gång, blir sömnen trygg och drömmen full av sång. Bryt upp, bryt upp! Den nya dagen gryr. Oändligt är vårt stora äventyr.” “The day of plenty, never is the greatest. The best day is a day of craving thirst. Yes, there is a meaning in our journey 
But ‘tis the pathway, which is worth our while. The thing to aim for is a nightlong rest,
Where the fire’s lit and bread is shared in haste. In places, where you go to sleep but once,
Your sleep is safe, your dream is full of song. Move on, move on! The new day dawns ahead.
Endless is our marvellous adventure.”
  • The Swedish Academy will go to court if car maker Mercedes-Benz doesn’t stop their commercial using a poem of Karin Boye’s, before March 21. But the threat may have no power.

  • Still from the video Mercedes GLA, Sweden
  • ”Our campaign ends already this weekend,” (March 15-16) says Director of Information at Mercedes-Benz, Sverker Dahl. In the new car commercial, actress Lena Endre reads Swedish poet Karin Boye’s perhaps most famous poem ”I rörelse” (”On the Move”) to images of a car driving by. This commercial has made the Swedish Academy see red. Peter Englund, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, writes angrily on his blog that he and the rest of the Academy have let their advocates send letters to the car maker, asking them to immediately stop using Boye’s poem for commercial use.

  • ”Mercedes-Benz has been given until March 21 to withdraw their commercial. Unless this does not happen, we go to court with the reference to the Copyright Act, Section 51,” Englund writes in an email to daily GP. The academy likens the use of Boye’s poem to grave robbery, and that Mercedes-Benz distorts the poem and what the author once stood for. ”What’s next? To use Edith Södergran in order to sell hamburgers, Gunnar Ekelöf selling diapers and Erik Johan Stagnelius floor polish?” Englund believes that even though Boye has been dead for more than 70 years and the copyright laws are thus lifted, is an inadequate defense. Mercedes-Benz however maintains they were given green light both verbally and in writing by the Karin Boye Society for permission to use the poem. ”They were positive and thought it was a great idea,” says Sverker Dahl.

  • Watch the video on youtube, here: Mercedes GLA Launch video, Sweden The film was created by the agency ANR BBDO.

  • ANR produced a true winner among video clips earlier in the year, Like a Swede (A Way of Living) (in English with Swedish subtitles) and earlier, in the fall of 2013 Forsman & Bodenfors brought us actor Jean-Claude Van Damme's "Epic Split."