Here’s a brief. You’re the marketing team at a truck company. Not pickup trucks. Big, commercial, haul-freight-across-Europe trucks. Your buyers are fleet managers and trucking company owners. The thing you need to promote is a new steering system that makes the truck more precise and stable.
Be honest. What would most B2B companies make? A spec sheet. A product video with a voiceover guy saying “precision engineering” over shots of a dashboard. Maybe a webinar if they’re feeling wild. Fourteen people would watch it, and eight of them would be employees.
In 2013, Volvo Trucks made something else.
The Epic Split
It opens on Jean-Claude Van Damme, the action movie guy, eyes closed, talking calmly about the ups and downs of his life. The camera pulls back. He’s standing with one foot on the side mirror of one Volvo truck and the other foot on another Volvo truck. Both trucks are driving backward. At sunset. While Enya’s “Only Time” plays.
Then the trucks slowly drift apart, and Van Damme slides into a full split, suspended between two moving trucks. One take. No cut. The whole thing is about a minute and a quarter long, and the only real “sales message” is a line at the end about the precision and stability of Volvo Dynamic Steering.
It went bananas. Tens of millions of views within weeks, and it’s now well past 100 million. It got parodied endlessly (Chuck Norris fans made their own version, naturally). It won top honors at Cannes Lions, the biggest awards show in advertising. For a truck. Steering system.
Why it worked
It’s tempting to file this under “big budget, famous celebrity, must be nice.” But the celebrity isn’t why it worked. Here’s why:
- It showed instead of told. “Our steering is precise” is a claim. Two trucks reversing so smoothly a guy can do the splits between them is proof. Your eyes believe it before your brain argues.
- It was one idea. Not twelve features. One thing: stable and precise. Everything in the video serves that one point.
- It remembered buyers are people. Fleet managers watch YouTube too. They laugh, they share things, they show their spouse the crazy video they saw. B2B buyers don’t stop being human when they log into work.
- It was part of a series. Epic Split was one of several “Live Test” videos Volvo made, each proving one truck feature in a ridiculous, real way. It wasn’t a one-hit wonder. It was a strategy.
And notice what’s missing
The logo. It’s barely there until the end. Nobody needed to see the Volvo logo in the first five seconds to remember who made that video. They remembered because the thing was unforgettable. That’s how it works. You earn the right to be remembered. You don’t get it by slapping your logo bigger on the screen.
How to steal this without Van Damme’s phone number
You don’t need a celebrity or a Cannes budget. You need the thinking. Try this:
- Pick one thing your product does better than anyone else. (Stuck? Start with your value proposition.)
- Ask: what’s the most extreme, visual, real way to prove it? Not describe it. Prove it.
- Film it on a phone if you have to. A real demo that’s a little bit crazy beats a polished video that’s a lot boring.
- Then do it again with the next feature. Make it a series.
B2B isn’t boring. B2B marketing is boring, because most of us are scared to look silly in front of buyers. Volvo Trucks looked a little silly and sold a lot of trucks. Pick one.
