How Volvo made trucking epic

As it’s Friday afternoon and the office has an ‘end of the week’ vibe going on, I’m keeping today’s blog post light reading.

As all PROs know, video can be a powerful tool for getting a message across to consumers and YouTube is a dream platform for getting your bit of brand content out to the wider world.

For any brand, a piece of video should engage, educate and importantly, entertain! When a video works on all those levels, it’s a thing of beauty and the results will speak for themselves. So today, I wish to pull focus on Volvo Trucks and their continuing series of short films in which their trucks are put through a series of unusual but hugely watchable ‘Live Tests.’

So far we’ve seen, amongst others, Volvo Truck’s President standing on a truck dangling from a crane; a truck doing a bull run in Spain; a truck being steered out of a quarry by a hamster and, this week’s release, Jean-Claude Van Damme doing his famous leg split between two trucks. 8million views and counting in two days? Yup, that’ll do.

All of these films are available to see here and you can even watch the bull run in glorious interactive 360-vision, which is a brilliant use of video technology. Importantly though, whilst all these films are fun to watch and eminently shareable, they all communicate important messages about the trucks themselves.

With the truck dangling from the crane, it’s the tow hook’s strength; with the bull run, it’s the truck’s manoeuvrability and with the hamster, it’s the lightness of the Dynamic Steering.

So to this week’s ‘live test’. Here Jean-Claude stands to tear more than just his jeans, with a very risky ‘doing the splits’ between two rolling juggernauts, all set to the perfectly chosen musical score of Enya. Whoever went for that soundtrack deserves an award. So what does that tell us apart from Jean-Claude has still got ‘it.’ Well it perfectly demonstrates ‘the stability and precision of Volvo Dynamic Steering.’ And it does, you should watch it.

Never mind that the overwhelming majority of the millions of viewers these videos are getting will never, ever, find themselves behind the wheel of a truck. Volvo is building their brand image and strength and amassing a huge social following alongside extensive media coverage. Scania have certainly got their work cut out. If I ever become a haulier, I know which truck I’m trucking.

Jean-Claude & Volvo Trucks: The Epic Split – [youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7FIvfx5J10[/youtube]