Volvo Excavators - ‘Pump It Up’ feat. Dolph Lundgren

Background

Volvo Construction Equipment offer a wide range of excavators that are able to handle any kind of job. However, half the excavator buyers in the world were not aware that Volvo made excavators at all. The task was to raise awareness of the range and prove that they were the toughest in the business.

Idea

The video showed the excavators taken through an army-style bootcamp in the hands of the baddest drill instructor in the world, Dolph Lundgren. The machinery was made to do push-ups, pull-ups on a steel construction, tyre flips in the mud and race each other while pulling 10 tonne concrete blocks.

All the stunts were real, nothing was faked.

And Dolph spurred them on to the music of “Pump Up the Jam”.

A “Behind the Scenes” film was also made in which experts from Volvo explained the machines while the operators talked about the stunts. This extra piece of content hammered home the details while still providing an entertaining Hollywood-style feel.

Results

The campaign went live on October 24th and by mid-December the “Pump It Up” videos had accumulated over 50 million views (dominated by Facebook and Instagram). The campaign generated close to 700 PR stories in total (majority earned) and much of that published outside the normal industry press.

Our Thoughts

This is B2B as it is seldom seen and a completely brilliant strategy. The kind of people with the sort of budgets to be in the market for earth-moving machinery do not spend their days on Facebook or YouTube. They are not kids and they do not have time on their hands. These videos are aimed at their teenage/twenty-something children. “Dad, Dad, you’ve got to see this.”

Persuaded to watch the video, Dad notices that Volvo have over 100 other short films about specific diggers in specific industries.

So, Dolph Lundgren is the hook that gets these busy industry professionals into the detail of Volvo’s offering. The videos on Volvo Construction Equipment’s YouTube channel have collected over 42 million views. And I’ll bet my boots that Volvo have sold a lot more excavators.