If you want to buy a car – or a truck – then you want to know that it isn’t just capable of handling corners, motorway driving and perhaps the odd off-road hill descent. No, these days customers are far more discerning, and need to be reassured that their next automotive investment will be pretty much death-defying.
1. Volvo Trucks
The new Volvo trucks advert, starring the president of Volvo Trucks, Claes Nilsson, shows the CEO standing on the new Volvo FMX… while it is suspended from a helicopter, 20 metres in the air, above Gothenberg harbour. Agency Forsman & Bodenfors says he “puts his neck on the line. No trick filming. Just Claes Nilsson, testing the new Volvo FMX.”
The advert, sure to be a YouTube sensation, is intended to demonstrate the durability of “the most robust truck they’ve ever made”. Nilsson, who had to stand on the truck for two hours, said: “It was fairly cold - about 8 degrees above zero - and the wind was blowing about ten metres a second, so my hands got pretty cold after a while.
“But it all went very well. Safety was 100 per cent all the way, so I was never really afraid.”
2. Ford B-Max
With only one letter separating “diving” and “driving”, it’s easy to excuse Ford for accidentally creating this next advert for the Ford B-Max. OK, it wasn’t an accident – they actually did ask a stuntman (who has worked on James Bond films, Batman films and Pirates of the Caribbean) to dive through the open doors of the mini MPV, highlighting the absence of a central pillar when the doors are open.
A behind-the-scenes video shows that, although the car really was suspended in the air below a diving board, the diver didn’t actually go straight through the car with no assistance. The stunt coordinator maintains, however, that the “danger is 100%.”
3. Honda – Difficult is worth doing
Well, yes, it was definitely difficult, and definitely worth doing. When Honda showed a live skydiving advert on Channel 4 – lasting 3 minutes 20 seconds, the full length of the advert break during an episode of Come Dine With Me – it attracted 2.2m viewers. Honda’s skydiving team jumped 14,000 feet in a remote part of Spain, and casually spelled out the word “Honda” on the way down.
The stunt was created in-house by Channel 4, and Channel 4's sales director, Andy Barnes, said the advert broke “the boundaries of the perceived confines of TV advertising. We wanted to create something unmissable and what better way to produce something 'must see' than to stage the first live ad event on TV. It's about creating talkability on a big scale, managing the risk and being seen as pioneers for it.”