The encyclopedia · Marketing & Brand · Marketing decision · 2013
Volvo proved truck stability by having Van Damme do a split between two reversing trucks
Volvo's precision steering was a hard-to-see spec; a live stunt made it visible and ran up 79M views.
Volvo Trucks
the move
Volvo Trucks had a genuinely hard-to-sell feature: a steering system that stabilises a truck against crosswinds and slides. Buyers could not see it on a spec sheet or feel it in an ordinary test drive.
Agency Forsman & Bodenfors staged a live test instead of a TV ad. Two FM trucks reversed in parallel while Jean-Claude Van Damme stood between them doing a full split, relying on the trucks holding a razor-thin gap.
The two-minute film was posted online, not gated behind a media buy. It became one of the most-viewed commercial films of the decade, with over 70 million YouTube views within the first year.
why it works
- A stunt is self-validating: viewers see the trucks hold position with a man between them, so no narrator has to assert it.
- Putting it online, not on TV, made the proof a thing people chose to watch and forward rather than an interruption.
- It reframed a dry engineering spec (steering precision) into a dramatic human event, so truck buyers and the public shared it.
- It won Best in Show across three juries at the One Show, confirming the juries needed no category to route it through.
what transfers
For an invisible technical advantage, film the proof instead of writing the promise; people share a demonstration, not a specification.
what came after
The Epic Split became the anchor of Volvo's 'Live Test' film series and swept the 2014 One Show, including Best in Show across the advertising, interactive and branded-entertainment juries. It became a reference for proving product claims with filmed demonstrations.
references
- Van Damme's 'Epic Split' for Volvo Trucks Tops The One Show
- Epic split wins advertising award for Volvo Trucks
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