Volvo: “The Epic Split feat. Van Damme”
Jean-Claude Van Damme does the splits between two reversing trucks, to show how precise Volvo's steering is.
- Brand
- Volvo
- Year
- 2013
- Agency
- Forsman & Bodenfors
- Category
- Cars
The camera starts on Jean-Claude Van Damme's face as he talks calmly about the ups and downs of his life. Slowly it pulls back, and we discover he is standing with one foot on each of two side mirrors, on two trucks driving backwards at sunset. As the trucks drift apart, he lowers himself into a perfect split, to Enya's Only Time.
The film was part of a series of "live tests" made by Swedish agency Forsman & Bodenfors for Volvo Trucks in 2013. Each stunt was designed to prove one technical feature, here the precision and stability of the Volvo Dynamic Steering system: the drivers had to keep the trucks perfectly parallel while reversing.
It is remarkable because it is a business-to-business ad. Very few people watching it will ever buy a truck, yet it was viewed tens of millions of times in a few weeks and won the top prizes at Cannes Lions. It showed that even a "boring" industrial product could become pop culture if the idea was simple enough to explain in one image.
Watch the full ad on YouTube
Could you recognise it with the logo hidden? This ad is one of 129 famous commercials in Guess the Ad.
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