Mercedes Tweet Race Is On!

The world’s first Tweet-fueled race kicked off yesterday, marking the debut of a new social media campaign by Mercedes-Benz USA (MBUSA) that complements its first time advertising on the Super Bowl ad. There are four two-person teams involved in the race, each leaving from a different city (Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Tampa) and heading to Dallas in custom-outfitted Mercedes-Benz vehicles.

Powering their cars are fans Tweets, and the team that reaches the finish line with the highest total score will be declared the winner, each member receiving a 2012 C-Klasse Coupe.

"We're really excited in seeing how this plays out now that the Race is on," said Stephen Cannon, vice president of Marketing for MBUSA. "The teams are incredibly creative and over the past few weeks they've generated content and interpreted the Mercedes-Benz brand in very cool and unexpected ways across virtually every social media platform to rally support for their teams and the charities.  They each bring a unique perspective and ability to the Race and it will be interesting to see how they leverage that to power them across the finish line."

Each team has the help of a Twitter–savvy celebrity coach – Serena Williams, Pete Wentz, Nick Swisher and Rev Run – who are also raising funds for charities in the process. The teams are listed below:

• Layla Kayleigh and co-driver Julissa Bermudez
• Todd Sanders and co-driver John Pederson
• Jennifer Marshall and co-driver Meredith Sinclair
• Len Kendall and co-driver John Morrison

The race ends tomorrow, February 4. You can pick a team to Tweet for and watch the race live at http://bit.ly/hNURoE.