Product placement and corporate partnerships have always been a major part of EA's monetization in their "free" social network games. SimCity Social is no exception. This week, a new mission brings some European high class to your city: the SimCity Social Mercedes-Benz Factory.

The SimCity Social Mercedes-Benz Factory Mission Announcement

Depending on your location, players of SimCity Social will see this splash page this week when logging into the game. After you click "OK," a new task will show up in your task list on the left side of your screen.

Driving Ambition

The first task in the SimCity Social Mercedes-Benz Factory mission is "Driving Ambition."

Your job in the Driving Ambition task is to Welcome the Mercedes-Benz Team to your city. If you click the question mark next to the task, Kristy Brown will tell you this hint:

Click your Mayor's House to greet the guests.

This is pretty simple. Click your Mayor's House, and click the option to "Welcome the Mercedes-Benz Team."

Sleek Machine

After you complete Driving Ambition, the next task will show up in your task list. The next task for the Mercedes-Benz in SimCity Social is "Sleek Machine."

To complete this task, simply build the Mercedes-Benz Factory. If you click the question mark, Kristy Brown reminds you:

You can find the Mercedes-Benz Factory in your inventory

Simply click the button for "Inventory" on this splash page, or open it from the normal control bar. Find the factory in your inventory and then build it.

Just like any construction in SimCity Social, you click the factory from the inventory, then click somewhere in your city where you are allow to build it. The area is marked off for construction, and you have to click the spot several times (in this case 3 times) to construct the factory.

When the construction is complete, the task is complete and the Mercedes-Benz team give you billboard to help in your campaign (that is, to help them in their campaign).

The good thing is that this billboard gives a +16 population bonus to residential areas in surrounding squares (which doesn't make a lot of sense; you'd think that billboards would decrease the desirability of a certain location).

Roll-Up for the Roll-Out

Once you've got your factory built, the next step in getting Mercedes-Benz in SimCity Social is to market and build the cars. This task is a three-parter:

• Develop AMG Sport Version
• Install Smartphone Docking Stations
• Place the A-Class Billboard

Place the A-Class Billboard

If you've already placed your billboard from the last task (like I obviously had when I took this screenshot), that portion will already be checked off. If you haven't completed that yet, it's simple to do. Just go to your inventory, select the billboard and place it in your SimCity.

Develop AMG Sport Version and Install Smartphone Docking Stations

These two parts are so similar, it's probably easiest to just address them at the same time. To develop the AMG Sport Version, Kristy Brown gives you this simple hint:

Select the Mercedes-Benz Factory and click 'Add AMG Sport Versions'

For the docking stations, you do almost the exact same thing:

Click the Factory, and select 'Install Smartphone Docking Stations'

Here's what it looks like:

Complete these two actions, and your task is complete.

There isn't a big show-just a splash page and a ton of experience points, which could potentially increase your overall rank.

The good thing about corporate-sponsored missions like this one for the SimCity Social Mercedes-Benz Factory is that they are typically not very difficult to complete, but they still give you some nice bonuses. Advertising often gets a bad wrap, but it's not always so terrible. What do you think?