If you are an attentive follower of Better Taste Than Sorry you remember that I took part of a brand workshop of Mercedes a few months ago. I reported about the whole thing. And two weeks ago I was invited for another brand workshop, this time it was Smart. Also part of the Mercedes brand but the younger, more urban part of it. To be honest it was more my kind of the brand.

This time the event took place in the Zeche Zollverein, a world heritage in Essen, Ruhrgebiet. The former pit is now converted into a huge playground for design within this rough historical place. In my opinion the perfect place to host such an event like the Smart brand workshop.

During the day we were allowed to drive different models of Smart. For example a Smart Brabus with 102 PS. I am not that big of a car-fan but driving in such a car is like playing with toys. Malte and me, we both shared some driving experiences and had some chats during our test drives, we had a huge smile on our faces while we were driving this car trough the Ruhrgebiet. Later we also tried the Smart Electric Drive, which was also a great experience and in my opinion also a first glimpse into the future.

Photo by Teymur Madjderey under cc-license

You may remember the last time I mentioned that there were a few things that could be criticised. Like we didn’t know who else was there or that we didn’t actually do a “workshop”. For my surprise and satisfaction this time they realized both things. We started a kick-off meeting where everybody could introduce himself. We learned who else was there and what they are blogging about. And later the day the spend the evening at a very pleasant beach bar and did some easy workshops where everybody was free to attend.

Photo by Teymur Madjderey under cc-license

I liked the easy atmosphere and we all talked about some things like the future of mobility or the reputation of the brand Smart. I can assure you, it was not only interesting for the people of Smart/Mercedes but also for us. We learned a lot about the brand and how things work within such a company.

All in all it was a great day and really fun to hang out with blogger like my good friend Malte, or Teymur, who I met for the first time a while ago at the Design Camp in Cologne. But it was also great to see the people of Mercedes again, especially the team of Tobias and Kristina. If the next event will be such a nice experience again, I am looking forward to it.

I don’t need to mention that the drinks were great, the food was delicious or the music was nice, or? By the way, Teymur also wrote a blog post about the brand workshop with some nice photos. You can find the photos also in his flickr stream, where I also took some of the photos above.